


I've Totally Got This

by tasalmalin



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: August 2016 Troping Along, Dimension Travel, Gen, Humor, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-08-10 19:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7858030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasalmalin/pseuds/tasalmalin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About three things I'm absolutely positive. First, I've suddenly and inexplicably appeared in the Final Fantasy VII universe. Second, it's up to me to save the world. Third... I'm gonna need some help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Shamelessly self-indulgent, this is a tribute to all the girl-falls-into-canon-universe stories I read and loved as a teenager. This is not a fic that takes itself, or its content, too seriously. I hope it's as fun to read as it was to write!

I’m not a superstitious person, or prone to spouting clichés. But if there’s ever a time where ‘be careful what you wish for’ applies, this is it.

Well, to be strictly accurate, ‘it’ was an hour ago, slogging through the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on my back. But this particular moment isn’t looking too great, either.

“Excuse me, I think the dehydration is going to my head. What kind of shop did you say this is?”

The shopkeeper looks like he’s seriously wishing he had some security here. “Materia. Like I said. Twice.”

I’ve been wandering around in the freaking wilderness for an hour, there is sweat dripping off my nose, and I lost a shoe in a gully. So I’m possibly not at my best. But just like the last twenty times I looked (gaped), this little shack is full of faintly glowing orbs that can’t possibly exist. “…huh.”

This cannot be happening. Okay, yes, somewhere between the sixth replay of the original game and watching the teasers for the remake on repeat, I possibly wished that I could experience the world of Final Fantasy VII for myself. But that kind of thing doesn’t actually _happen_.

“Look, if you’re not going to buy anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. My valuable time is for paying customers only.”

Paying customers, my ass. There isn’t another soul in the shop. But I’m not rude, unlike _some_ people, and I don’t mention it.

Besides, I have slightly larger concerns at the moment. Accepting, for the moment, the premise that I really am in Gaia, the first step is to determine where I am. There’s mountains looming over the town, along with a mako reactor that’s either really bizarrely constructed or not finished yet. With Shinra, it really could go either way. Also a sign that says ‘Welcome to Corel’, which, probably should have started with that.

Panic tries to set in, but this is one of those rare occasions where fanfiction prepares you for real life. I went through a Tenth Walker phase, and I’ve read plenty of secret twin self-inserts. Either (a) I’m in a coma, or (b) I was in a fatal accident and I’ve been reincarnated here by mysterious means. And whichever it is, the response is the same: act like I’m really here. Otherwise this could be a really long, really boring coma sitting on my ass, or a really short, really pathetic death from starvation. Or thirst, rather, since that would happen sooner.

Ah, and there’s the panic again. I stumble, my bare foot catching painfully on a rock, and I go down on my ass in a puddle. Yeah, I’m just making one hell of an impression on the townspeople.

But I have no money—I suppose it’s gil now—and a lot of immediate needs, like water, food, dry clothes and a left shoe. I don’t know anyone in this world, know very little about how it operates when not on the verge of apocalypse, and somehow Shinra doesn’t strike me as the kind of people to have a good welfare system in place.

“Okay,” I say aloud, “first things first. Breathe. Good. Now get out of the puddle.”

I stand up and try to brush off the excess water, though nothing really helps with the discomfort of wearing wet underwear. Still, it feels good to be doing _something_.

“You can do this. Just break it down into manageable tasks. You’re going to need some help.”

I look around, but the townspeople are pointedly not looking at me. I want to warn them about the reactor, especially Barret, but why should they believe me? And anyway, I’m not even sure where I am in the timeline. There’s a lot of time between when Shinra first starts building the reactor and when it explodes. I think. And anyway, most of the information I know is super, super classified, and is zero help to me unless I secretly enjoy being interrogated by the Turks and having my body dumped in a river somewhere.

Which I don’t.

“Just keep breathing. Think. Who is a total badass, definitely an adult at this time, and has a lot of time on their hands?”

~*~

In retrospect, I should have put some more thought into this. Yes, Nibelheim is conveniently also on this continent, and in a generally southwesterly direction, but a two-dimensional, pixelated map does not actually translate into actual terrain as well as one might think.

I definitely remember having to walk along the tracks for the mining carts in the game, so that seems as good a place to start as any. And it’s marginally easier on my poor, shoeless foot than the rocky ground.

Still. This is going to be a _really_ long walk.

Also, turns out that that useful-stuff-just-lying-around-everywhere video game mechanic? Total bullshit. Two hours of scrounging and all I came up with was a blanket and a broken handle that must have once been attached to a shovel or a rake or something. I suppose it’s better than nothing, but I was kind of hoping for a phoenix down.

Something tells me I’m going to need it.

Water turns out to be reasonably plentiful, and I’m thirsty enough not to have too many qualms about it being unfiltered. The mako reactor probably hasn’t had too much of an opportunity to poison the environment yet, and maybe Gaia doesn’t even have giardia.

The food situation is getting kind of dire, though. I’m not the outdoorsy type, but I had to read _Hatchet_ in seventh grade like everyone else, and I know you can eat wood sorrel and dandelion leaves and rock tripe because my dad’s kind of weird, but for all intents and purposes I’m in an alien environment. None of the vegetation looks vaguely recognizable, not even suspicious mushrooms, and some of it is definitely menacing me.

Now why couldn’t I have been stranded in Banora? At least they have apples.

Wait. _Are_ those mushrooms? I’ve done just enough random research on the internet to know that trying to judge which mushrooms are edible in the wild is a _terrible_ idea, but, desperate times, and all that.

Except, those mushrooms are moving. On tiny little mushroom legs.

Shit.

There’s five or six of them now, little red caps on top of excessively long stems like some kind of bizarre periscopes. They look more like Star Wars droids than any sort of plant life. Fungi. Whatever.

Question: Am I too proud to run away from a slowly advancing squad of mushrooms?

Answer: Hell, no.

The mushrooms are coming out of a crevice in the mountain, not quite blocking the path but definitely getting there, so I hustle out to the very edge of the path and scoot around them, as quickly as possible.

They turn in unison, though they haven’t got any eyes as far as I can see.

It’s _extremely creepy._

“Heh heh,” I say, waving my arms in what’s hopefully mushroom for ‘I surrender’. “I’ll just, be going then. Yep.”

As one, they sort of hunker down, their stupidly long stem things folding up like accordions.

I freeze.

And then the closest one explodes in a big yellow puff.

Naturally, I face this new development calmly and reasonably, by which I mean I shriek and fall over, scrabbling backwards to try and get out of range.

The other mushrooms go off, so the whole path is covered in a yellow haze, and then it’s clear that nothing too terribly essential was lost in the explosions, because the mushrooms start advancing again.

Definitely time to run.

I flip over and scramble to my feet, only to find that my bare foot feels like I’ve been sitting on it for hours, the kind of numbness that has passed by ‘you are about to be twitching madly’ straight into ‘you are about to sprain an ankle’.

It has to be the damn dust. It didn’t get any higher than my knees, but my jeans are fairly thick (as evidenced by the fact that they are _still_ damp from the puddle incident), and the powder must need direct contact.

Judging by how my foot feels, I’m lucky I didn’t breathe any of it in.

Except now the best I can manage is a cautious sort of shuffle, and that’s not going to cut it with these mushrooms. They have to hop over the slats in the mining tracks, but that’s not slowing them down enough to gain me any ground. Maybe crawling would be faster?

A bird trills, and I look up to see three of them perched on a ledge about ten yards away. Maybe they like to eat mushrooms?

One of them starts sparking. Oh, that can’t be good.

There’s a much louder, deeper cawing sound, and I’m not even surprised to see another bird, this one perched on the cliff on the other side of the path. It’s big, really big, and though it doesn’t seem to be giving off electricity it does have this thousand-yard stare that goes straight to my lizard brain. Have you ever been stared down by an owl? Not nearly as adorable as memes would suggest.

This is not looking good for me.

Maybe the various predators will get distracted fighting each other, but I don’t want to bank on that. I could possibly sweep the mushrooms off the path with my stick (why didn’t I think of that sooner??) but that still leaves the birds. I’m a lot more confident in my ability to fend off slow, semi-sentient vegetation than magical birds.

Off the path. Hmm.

I’m not in that strange part of the track where you drop onto all the items, I’m actually pretty close to the ground here. And this particular ground features a wide, fast-moving river.

I look at the birds, obviously waiting for my first idiotic move. I look at the mushrooms, who are still advancing with a hive-minded dedication that kind of reminds me of a zombie movie.

Well. With a busted foot, I can swim a lot faster than I can run, and a hell of a lot faster than I can fly.

I jump in.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been so confident in the safety of the water. I mean, you don’t have too many water encounters in the game, but you also can’t really go in the water. It would be just my luck to find a Tentacruel or something, though at least I would instantly die of terror and my suffering would be brief.

But it turns out there really are no water monsters on Gaia, or at least not any in this particular spot in the river. I’m a good swimmer, and since my only goal is ‘away’ I get a lot of help from the current. Eventually the mining tracks and rocks give way to grass and wide-open space.

I’m starting to get numb all over—this river is cold!—so I make for shore and just flop on the grass, soaking in the warm sunshine and enjoying my state of still being alive.

Finally, however, it’s time to consider my situation.

It doesn’t take as seasoned a video gamer as myself to know that tall grass equals danger. And to make things even more unfortunate. I simply can’t remember what sorts of random encounters to expect. Those possessed Russian doll/Easter egg things are found in the grass, right? And the weird bubbly elephants? Ooh, are there chocobos near Corel? That would be useful.

I would literally kill for access to the wiki right now.

~*~

I have never experienced joy like when I finally stumble across a road. It’s even paved, and it’s all I can do not to fall down and kiss it.

Actually maybe I should. It’s not like I really have anything to lose at this point. Maybe I should pray to the Goddess while I’m at it. Canon evidence suggests that sometimes she answers.

I pitch my blanket tent right there on the side of the road, just in case, but no one goes by. The road to Nibelheim must not be a terribly popular one. Or I’m lost. Or both?

But my luck has clearly turned, because only a few hundred yards from my impromptu campsite is a plant that looks very much like clover. Clover is edible, right?

It is.

I sort of follow the rules that anyone who’s read one of those disaster survival book knows, touching the plant to my mouth and waiting, chewing and waiting, ingesting a tiny bit and waiting, but eventually hunger wins over waiting and I scarf it down in great handfuls.

Bliss.

With the river nearby for water, I spend a not-unbearably-uncomfortable night out in the wilderness and wake with the sun, ready to tackle the day’s challenges. All the clover that I didn’t eat last night goes in my stolen blanket, which I tie into a bundle and, in a fit of inspiration, put on the end of my stick. That’s definitely a movie-approved method of makeshift transportation.

And speaking of transportation, is that a car engine I hear?

So close to the mountains, I hear the car long before I can see it. It’s more of a jeep, really, when it finally crests the hill. I stick out my thumb, realize that’s stupid, and wave my arms frantically.

Asshole just drives right on by.

“Dammit!”

I’m tired from walking for a whole day and that whole swimming-for-my-life incident, not to mention the inadequate diet, but I don’t want to just sit here alone with my thoughts. So, more walking it is. The road is even going in approximately the right direction.

Assuming the sun rises in the east on Gaia the way it does on Earth. I didn’t even think of that.

Oh well. The road only goes in two directions, so fifty-fifty I’m going the right way.

The sun is well on its way to setting and I’ve been ignored by two more cars when an honest-to-god cart comes down the hill. I’d say a horse-drawn cart, except those are definitely not horses. Mostly they look like really big cats.

The guy driving it pulls back on the reins so he can give me a good, long stare.

“Uh, hey,” I say.

“Where are you goin’?”

“Nibelheim.”

He thinks about that. “On foot?”

“Yep.”

He looks at me.

I try to look as pathetic as possible, which, filthy, sunburned, and wearing only one shoe, isn’t that difficult.

“Can you sing?”

 “Uh, no. Well, yes, but very badly. I can tell stories, though! You’ve never heard these before, trust me.”

He kind of harrumphs, then clambers down off the cart, efficiently releasing the cat things and setting up his own camp, complete with fire and some kind of mystery meat.

I try really, really hard not to visibly drool.

“Well?” he says, gesturing with a meat stick.

Naturally, every single story I’ve ever heard just leaks out of my brain. Then I see the cats, and launch into a recitation of a Thor fanfic I once read. Look, Frigga had a chariot pulled by cats, this is a cart pulled by cats, there’s totally a connection there.

“Huh,” he says, chewing thoughtfully. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

I cringe.

“Still, definitely never heard that one before.” He hands me a meat stick, which I fall on like a ravenous animal. “As it happens, I’m on my way to Nibelheim, and it’s a boring trip to make solo. You keep up with these stories, I’ll give you a lift.”

“ _Thank you._ ”

“And tell you what, these fellows” he pats the giant cats “do most of the hunting, but if you help with the prep work, I’ll throw in some food, too.”

“Yes, absolutely,” I say, even though I have only the vaguest idea of the process of turning a live animal into food. I’ll rip it apart with my bare hands if I have to. Though hopefully I won’t. “You got a deal.”

Over the next few weeks—yes, weeks—I frequently consider nominating this man for sainthood. He knows everything about foraging for food, he has a gun (and two giant cats) to discourage predators, and I really can’t say enough about the superiority of even a bumpy, lumpy cart ride compared to walking however many hundreds of miles. I never would have made it on my own.

So I tell him the plot of every single Disney movie I’ve ever seen, my favorite books, comics, anime—anything except the Final Fantasy games. He’s a nice guy; I wouldn’t want the Turks coming after him. And maybe I’m being a little paranoid, out here alone in the wilderness, but. _Turks_.

We get passed by loads of vehicles going to and from Nibelheim—though he says no one actually goes _to_ Nibelheim, and actually they’re just passing through there on their way to and from Rocket Town—and most of them are apparently Shinra vehicles.

“Most folks out here just can’t afford fancy cars,” he grumbles, obviously not overfond of Shinra.

Which is fair, I don’t like them much, either.

He does share a few thoughts of his own, mostly when my voice gives out, and I’m able to piece together that most of the tragic backstories of the game haven’t happened yet. Except Vincent, obviously. But the Wutai War has barely begun, and Sephiroth is kind of a nonentity, at least to the public.

Which is actually weirder than anything else about this little world-hopping adventure. Who doesn’t know _Sephiroth_?

By the time we finally get there, I’ve pretty much lost my voice, and he very generously offers to take me back out of Nibelheim, obviously not believing that anyone, even someone as weird as myself, would actually want to go there.

“Thanks, but I’m all set. And really, I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done.”

He shrugs that off, and goes about his business, resupplying the tiny mountain town.

I square my shoulders and head off. I’ve got a mission to accomplish.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Some fighting-related violence and description of injuries

It ends up taking forever to find the Mansion. The town looks a lot smaller in a video game, and honestly I mostly didn’t pay that much attention to the parts of Nibelheim that didn’t involve slaying dragons in one hit during the Sephiroth flashback or actually acquiring Vincent. Once I get _in_ the Mansion I’ll know exactly what to do, but until then…

Well, it’s a small town, so the best that can be said there is that I do eventually find the Mansion.

Just in time, too, because it starts to snow. Though this compares to my previous experience with snow the way blowing out a birthday candle compares to Dorothy’s arrival in Oz.

This must be what it’s like to live in Canada.

I’d hoped to come up with a plan of attack before venturing into the Mansion, because I’m still armed with nothing but a broken stick and it’s like a monster frat party in there. However, since it looks like my options are ‘freeze to death behind this boulder’ and ‘hope there aren’t monsters in _every_ room’, I’m going to have to go with door number two.

It’s verging on a total whiteout when I finally stumble up to the front door, and I can’t feel my hands or feet. Or my face. After this, I’m moving to the tropics.

And then the door is locked.

Crap.

“Okay, okay, you can handle this. It’s fine. Of course it’s locked. But this isn’t actually a video game, you don’t need to quest for the key or anything. It’s a drafty old building. There have to be broken windows, or a servant’s entrance, _something._ Just go find it.”

The wind howls and drops approximately two tons of snow on me.

Swimming out of a snow drift? Not as easy as Legolas makes it look.

Teeth chattering, I make my way to the side of the house, peering into windows. At the first one I almost give myself a heart attack, because there’s a Dorky Face _right there_ and holy crap those things had not looked that scary in the game.

The third room is empty, but only has one of those stupid windows that open like a door, and it won’t open wide enough for me to get through. I finally hit the jackpot at the tenth window, all the way on the opposite side of the mansion. There’s no obvious signs of monsters—my old D&D instincts flare that it isn’t the trap you _see_ that gets you, but I try not to think about that—and the window is broken, smashed in some storm.

The window’s a bit too high, and the sill is slippery with snow and my numb hands are basically useless, but I do eventually manage to wiggle through. After some debate, I decide my faithful blanket is best used covering the window, and manage to secure the edges on the peeling woodwork.

Then I look around for something else to do. It’s better indoors and while I’m not actively being snowed on, but it’s still way too cold to just be standing around. Rubbing my hands together vigorously seems like a good start, but there’s no improvement that I can notice.

Hmm. Back when I played Oregon Trail that was _not_ the cure for frostbite. Wasn’t it gradual warming of the affected area? That sounds like a much better idea, especially since the affected area is everywhere.

There’s no obvious heating system, and somehow I doubt Shinra’s been keeping up with the electrical bill, but there is a great deal of dusty furniture, most of it wood, and some throw pillows and couch cushions.

People have been making fire for thousands of years. Surely I can figure it out.

I break up the chairs so I can form a little wooden teepee—hey, I was a Daisy, I know stuff—and picked all the stuffing and a bunch of threads out of one of the pillows. The cushions I arrange around myself sort of like a blanket. In the event I ever actually regain some body heat, they’ll help to keep it in.

Then it’s just a matter of rubbing sticks together.

For hours.

My shoulders are a solid ache when I finally, finally get a spark, and almost smother it in my enthusiasm. I cross all my fingers and blow as gently as I can, once, twice…

“Yes!” I shout, probably attracting every monster in the Mansion and almost blowing out my infant fire. Stupid. I have a few breathless moments, but nothing comes creeping in so I concentrate on coaxing the little flame on to bigger and better things. The stuffing doesn’t burn very well or long, and I go through almost a whole other pillow before one of the chair legs finally catches.

Victory. I carefully pile on the bigger wood and warm myself. By the time I start to get seriously concerned that the floor is going to catch and the whole place will go up, I can feel my hands and my teeth have stopped chattering.

Time to poke a sleeping dragon. Or Turk, as the case may be.

~*~

Now that my brain is firing on more than one, frozen neuron, it’s obvious that I can’t follow the game mechanics to rescue Vincent. If I even make it to the safe, I’ll last approximately two seconds against the Lost Number.

But I made it into the Mansion proper through a window, so it stands to reason that I can do the same for the basement. I’ll just have to dig through the snow a bit.

Luck is with me, because my little fire adventure must have taken the whole night, and the storm has abated and there’s enough sunlight to actually see where I’m going. The snowdrifts are as tall as I am, but I can use my stick to poke through them, tapping for hidden windows.

It just goes to show that, if you pick up something in a video game, eventually it will be useful to your quest. And with my blanket wrapped around my poor bare foot, the snow isn’t quite as unbearable this morning.

I do eventually find a window, and clearing the snow reveals it to be just big enough to squeeze through. Hopefully. Now, I didn’t want to break windows and alert monsters back when I was trying to hide out in the Mansion, but this is different. Besides, the only things in the basement are bats and zombies. The bats I can hopefully just duck, and as for the zombies, well… hopefully they’re more your classic _Night of the Living Dead_ type and not the Snyder remake variety.

That settled, I aim for the center of the window and give it my best golf swing.

Have you ever swung a baseball bat full-strength into a fence post? Yeah.

“ _Freaking ow!_ ”

I clutch my arms to my sides, trying to restore feeling and control the aftershocks. Ow, ow, ow.

When I finally stop feeling like my arms are about to vibrate right off my shoulders, I settle down to think.

My expertise in window-breaking is confined to television. Elbows is a favorite, but no way in hell am I doing that; I’ll probably break my arm instead. Also diamonds, which I obviously don’t have. Hmm, but maybe that’s a hint that I’m going about this wrong. Maybe something sharp and pointy will work better than blunt force. There’s plenty of rocks around here, it’s a mountain range.

Some scouting turns up a pointy rock, which I apply—carefully!—to the edges of the window this time. Trying to pry the glass out gets me nowhere, as does scraping the surface of the window. But a tentative second attempt at smashing yields a tiny crack. The angle’s bad, but a few more hits and a piece of glass falls and shatters inside the basement.

I wait, but there’s no other sounds. Maybe the bats and zombies are really sound sleepers.

It takes some effort to clear the glass out, even with my blanket to protect me, and I’m pretty sure I’ve missed some of it, but it’s as good as it’s going to get.

Wriggling through the window, I’m sure I missed some, because it gouges out a half dozen deep scratches in my arms. It’s painful, obviously, but more concerning is the fact that this place used to be Hojo’s lab. I probably have twenty infectious diseases already, and then I’m going to sprout tentacles and explode.

Freaking Hojo.

The drop to the floor is a little further than I anticipated and I land in a heap. Except for the tiny square of light from the window, the corridor is pitch black, and that instinctive human fear of darkness is bad enough without knowing for a fact that it is teeming with monsters.

No one’s here to judge me, so I drop down to my hands and knees and crawl. I sincerely hope the faint rustling by the ceiling is just my imagination, but it can’t hurt to make myself a smaller target. Plus I’m less likely to blunder into something in the all-consuming darkness.

It’s really impossible to tell how far I crawl before there’s a faint glow at the end of the tunnel, and I hurry toward it like a moth to a flame. Hopefully not that much like a moth, though, given… Yeah. Bad analogy.

The light turns out to be a torch, and the fact that it is still burning in the basement of a mad scientist’s lab that’s been abandoned for years should be more disturbing than it is, but that light illuminates the door to Vincent’s resting place—ha—which means I’ve made it.

This is, of course when I hear The Sound. Right behind me.

Like every bad horror movie victim I’ve ever seen and mocked, I turn in slow motion. Emerging from the inky shadows are a jumble of rotting, unnaturally shaped limbs, attached to rotting, unnaturally shaped zombies, dripping slime and who-knows-what-else.

I’m completely frozen there on the floor, just watching them lurch along, and it’s not until one actually touches my foot that I can breathe again.

I use most of that first breath to scream, and kick out at the zombie limb, which does precisely nothing to the zombie because its body has roughly the structural integrity of a bag of jello. It does light a much-needed fire under my ass, though, and I scurry along the floor like a desperate rat, really extremely motivated by the goopy hand that’s still got hold of my foot.

The zombies are, unfortunately, fast. They don’t seem too concerned that I’ll escape, as much as one can discern human facial expressions from that… that, and are just kind of keeping pace, but I’m definitely not escaping in any sense.

The zombie finally gets bored, hungry, whatever, and lifts me right off the ground. Resisting the _totally justified_ urge to give into panic, I make a wild grab for the doorknob and actually get it. The door creaks open ominously, letting in just enough light to illuminate the dusty, cobwebby coffins.

Seriously?

I was kind of hoping that with all the ruckus Vincent would wake up, but I guess terrified screams are probably par for the course around here. Getting two fingers around the doorframe is a poor substitute, but it will have to do.

The zombie is starting to get annoyed and yanks, almost pulling my arm out of its socket. I can’t believe I don’t lose my grip, and flail around trying to get my other hand on the doorframe.

I’m slightly distracted when something _bites my foot._

I shriek loud enough that it _should have_ woken the dead, thanks a lot Vincent, and finally get both hands on the doorframe and pull as hard as I can. Unlike the zombies, I’ve got solid muscles and bones under my skin, and maybe they slipped in my blood or something because I tumble into the room, minus a bite-sized chunk of my left foot.

Freaking _ow_.

Gritting my teeth, because it’s not over yet, I flip onto my back and find that although the door is invitingly open, the zombies are hovering well back from it, making menacing gestures but showing no signs of attempting to voluntarily breech the threshold.

It’s things like this that make Vincent my favorite.

“You should be more wary of venturing where monsters fear to tread.”

I just about jump out of my own skin, banging my half of a left heel painfully on the dirty stone. “Holy crap! Make some noise!”

Vincent doesn’t respond. He does honestly look kind of creepy, sitting up in a coffin with his glowing red eyes and his shroud-like cape and the emaciated thinness of his face and did I mention the coffin thing? He really does look like a corpse that just decided to sit up and stop talking.

But.

 _Vincent Valentine_.

“I’m a big fan,” I say. “You have your own tag on my tumblr.”

He huffs and lies back down. The coffin lid falls back on its own with a crash.

I would kick myself if I wasn’t worried about the state of my foot. “Idiot. Might as well have said you have pictures on your wall or something. Now you just sound like a creepy stalker.”

The coffin makes a muffled noise. It sounds like ‘leave’.

I glance out at the zombies, still squelching menacingly. “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

The coffin doesn’t respond.

My blood drips on the floor.

The zombies squelch.

“Well. This sucks.”

~*~

The zombies do eventually get bored and wander away, and the balance between fear of blood loss and agonizing pain tips in favor of my tearing strips out of my precious blanket and trying to patch up my foot a bit. Heels are awkward to wrap.

“Look,” I say to the coffin, “the whole world is about to go to hell. I’m talking meteors from space, a planet-wide plague, WEAPONs awakening, Hojo getting a cult following, serious, serious shit is about to hit the fan. There’s a pretty short list of people capable of dealing with all that. The list is basically you.”

Judging by the silence, Vincent is not moved by the prospect of being a hero.

“I hadn’t intended to just bug you out of an early grave, but I will if I have to.”

In the ongoing silence, I’m reminded that Vincent has been sleeping for like twenty years, and isn’t likely to get bored in the next ten minutes. Grr.

“Okay, how about this? If you’re not motivated by altruism, what about vengeance? Hojo is still out there, head of the science department, screwing over everyone. Did I mention he has a fanclub? And really, he’s responsible for at least three of the apocalypses. Apocalypsi? That’s not a word I ever thought I’d need to know the plural of.”

Stupid coffin is still stupidly silent.

“Seriously! I didn’t play Before Crisis, but Fuhito is indirectly his fault, possibly directly, I don’t know, and Sephiroth was _definitely_ —”

“Sephiroth? You know Sephiroth?”

I blink. “Didn’t I open with that?”

It’s hard to tell, with the wild hair and the high collar, but I think he might be having a facial expression. A facial expression of ‘you’re an idiot’.

“Right. I _meant_ to start with that, but I got distracted by my near-demise. I don’t know Sephiroth _personally_ , obviously, but I can tell you all about him. I know loads of classified stuff. It’s one of the reasons I had to be so careful who I told, because I don’t want the Turks to find out.”

The ‘you’re an idiot’ vibe intensifies.

“Okay, yes, so I cleverly ran to a Turk. But you’re, you know. Retired. Anyway, can we focus on rescuing Sephiroth? It’ll solve several major apocalypse-level problems all by itself.”

He’s, wait for it, silent.

“Too soon? Forget I said anything about rescuing anyone. This can be pure information dump, scout’s honor.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Um…” I hadn’t thought of that.

“This building must be full of information on Sephiroth. You are trying to deceive me.” He goes to close the lid again.

I jump forward, catching my fingers painfully in the descending lid, but if we start playing a waiting game I’ll definitely starve to death first. “No! I mean, yes, probably, but I haven’t been in the mad science part of the mansion yet. Actually, I know _way more_ about the situation than what’s in the mansion, which is mostly crap anyway. Hojo has this thing he’s trying to trick Sephiroth into doing, but that’s kind of the middle of the story and I don’t want to start there.”

“Are you with Shinra?”

“Uh, no?”

“Are you a scientist?”

“Definitely not.”

“So why do you know Project S even exists?”

“Ah. Yes. Good question.” I consider lying. Then I consider how good Vincent must be at telling when people are lying. “See, I’m from another… planet. And on my planet, _this_ planet is a video game. Do you guys have those? It’s sort of like an interactive movie. And I’ve played the games, okay, some of the games, so I know a bunch of stuff about some major shit that’s about to happen. Because a lot of these games take place in the future.”

“…”

“I know that sounds _slightly_ preposterous—”

“Leave. Now.”

“—but I’m telling the truth! Look, I’ll prove it to you! I didn’t play Dirge of Cerberus because I suck at first person shooters, but I did watch the youtube compilation of the cutscenes.”

“…”

“That’s the story about _you_. Okay, so, you got assigned to guard duty in Nibelheim… no, wait, that’s the middle. Gast Faremis finds this body in the Northern Crater, and… that’s probably too much backstory. Can I have a second to organize my thoughts?”

He inclines his head infinitesimally.

Okay. The tragic story of Vincent Valentine. Where does it start? “Way back when, a Shinra biotechnologist was investigating what all of her colleagues thought was a crackpot theory: that Gaia had WEAPONs, hybrid biological/mechanical superpowered beings that could rise to the Planet’s defense if it were ever threatened. That scientist was Lucrecia Crescent, and she, together with her mentor, Grimoire Valentine, discovered two of those WEAPONs...”

Vincent doesn’t so much as twitch through the whole story, not even when I get to his own death.

“…and then Lucrecia jumped into a mako pool, and you were locked up here, and Hojo took Sephiroth to Midgar, and, yeah. That pretty much catches you up.”

“I must think about this,” Vincent says, and uses his superhuman reflexes to push my hands out of the way and shut himself in the coffin.

“Well, that’s fair,” I say, to the lid. “Just, maybe not too long? We aren’t all functionally immortal. And while this room is actually pretty warm, relatively speaking, and monster free, which trust me I truly appreciate, it’s not exactly the Ritz, you know?”

Of course he doesn’t answer.

So now it’s just me, the lingering frostbite, the gnawing hunger, and the throbbing agony of my mutilated foot. I almost don’t even notice the foot long scratches from my trip through the window.

Isn’t this fun.

~*~

I must have fallen asleep, or more likely passed out, because the next thing I remember, something is touching my feet. And one thing about me: I’m really, really ticklish.

I shriek and kick out, hitting something, and suddenly remember the zombies, and scream and kick again. It’s just Vincent, though, looking supremely unimpressed.

Right.

It occurs to me that ‘ticklish’ shouldn’t be the primary thing my foot is feeling, but aside from being really, extremely dirty and covered in some weird green goop, it seems to be fine. No blood, no pain, and no hint of bone that I was pretending I hadn’t seen, because I don’t really want to contemplate a world where I can look at my own foot bones.

Vincent’s holding a bottle with just a thin layer of weird green goop inside, so that clears up some of the mystery. “Potion?”

He nods.

“That is some potent stuff,” I say. “We don’t have magic potions where I come from. I’m sorry I missed it.”

“I’m sure there will be a repeat experience,” Vincent says, dry as grave dirt.

“So you do have a sense of humor.” In a creepy, Turk sort of way. “I’m guessing you have some questions?”

“Is Sephiroth here?”

“In the Mansion or in the town? Well, either way the answer is no, so, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“Where is he?”

“I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but at this time he should be obliterating the curve in the SOLDIER program. In Midgar.”

“Well, then,” he says. “You can answer my questions on the way to Midgar.”

Well. Awesome.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Brief but slightly gross descriptions of hunting for food and eating it.

Once Vincent Valentine decides something, he doesn’t mess around. Actual years of lying in a coffin brooding or communing with the Planet or whatever the hell he was doing, and now it’s been approximately eight seconds and he’s already halfway out the door.

My first steps are a little tentative, but that potion is really something, because there’s no more pain.

Could do without the goopy mud feeling, though.

“Maybe we should search the Mansion?” I call after him. The guy is already out of sight. I can just tell this is going to be a real fun trip. “Food? Blankets? Maybe a shoe?”

There’s no answer.

“Weapons?” I shout, trying to hustle up the stairs. Vincent’s the kind of badass that monsters don’t even bother challenging, they just run and hide, but that’s not going to help a whole lot if I fall too far behind.

“Weapons?” he asks, from behind me.

“Yah! Wear bells or something!”

He looks distinctly unimpressed.

“Right, weapons. There’s a summon materia in the safe upstairs—and a monster!—and I know there’s at least one gun lying around somewhere. Some kind of rifle or something, and I think Cerberus is here, too. Or will be, sometime before Dirge of Cerberus. It’s like a three barreled… gun. With a sort of chain thing. I kind of got the impression it was special to you.”

That probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I’m talking to the air anyway. He disappeared sometime during my rambling explanation.

Well, I’m still looking for shoes, and he’d just better do that appearing out of nowhere thing trick if I end up in mortal peril. Again.

The bedrooms are actually reasonably well stocked, like maybe the former inhabitants left in a hurry, and I manage to scavenge two duffel bags with wide enough straps that they could be carried like a backpack, some musty but serviceable clothes, and shoes that are only one size too big.

No food, though.

Vincent is waiting by the front door, with a rifle in one hand in Cerberus in the other.

“I didn’t know if you’d want… stuff,” I say, lamely, dropping the empty duffel on the floor in a cloud of dust.

I sneeze.

“This will suffice,” he says, strapping the rifle on one side of his belt and the whatever-Cerberus-is on the other side. There’s also a pouch thing that he fills with bullets. Right. Which is a thing he obviously needs.

Why the hell is this stuff still lying around? Probably some sick joke of Hojo’s.

I shrug and leave the bag where it is. Vincent’s obviously going to do what he wants, and he knows a hell of a lot more about his needs than I do. Well, possibly. In any event, he’s functionally immortal, so maybe he doesn’t even feel the cold.

“Let’s go,” he says, pushing the doors open and striding out into the snow.

“You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would,” I say, because I’m a colossal moron. Why do I always feel the need to poke at everything?

“You know far more than you should,” he says, not pausing in his march through the snow. He can’t walk on it like an elf, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be inconveniencing him at all, like it’s melting out of his way of something.

Leaves a nice path, though.

“I will determine what you know and how you know it,” he says. “And if you’re a threat then I will kill you.”

Delightful.

~*~

I had to stuff my shoes with newspaper so my feet didn’t slide around, and it turns out that actually helps keep them warmer. Considering Vincent’s strategy seems to be to orient towards Midgar and walk until we get there, I’m grateful. I never appreciated how high mountains were until now. And how snowy.

I struggle and wheeze my way straight up a cliff, or at least it feels that way, and the other side looks just as steep. I’m seriously considering just sliding down on my bum. Probably Vincent’s too dignified for that, but I’m sure not.

“So talk,” he says.

“I think my lips have frostbite,” I say.

He gives me a look.

“You think I’m joking,” I say, but very quietly. “Can it wait until we get out of the snow?”

He opens his mouth, probably to say no, and then a great noise reverberates through the mountains, setting off a number of small avalanches.

I have a few ideas what it might be, but I really, really hope they’re all wrong.

“Um,” I say, before a _freaking dragon_ appears.

It flies out from a cave or something, huge and green and seriously, how can those wings move that body? It should be really cool, but actually it’s really, extremely terrifying.

“Crap,” I say, very helpfully. Apparently Vincent’s badass aura doesn’t affect dragons. But he can totally take this guy? Right?

Vincent is shaking, and sort of glowing a bit, and also… getting taller?

“Oh, double crap,” I say, backing into the dubious shelter provided by an overhanging rock. “Oh, this is so not good.”

The dragon banks towards us, spewing fire. The snow evaporates in an instant, turning the peak into a tiny sauna, and I barely get around the other side of the boulder in time.

Vincent, or whoever Vincent is now, I didn’t get a good look, leaps over the flames and onto the dragon’s head. Probably not Chaos, then, he has wings.

The dragon lets out a furious screech, Vincent roars in challenge, and just hearing the sounds of the battle is more than enough for me, I have no intention of looking. I do touch the boulder I’m hiding behind, and burn my fingers. It’s that hot still.

Just.

 _Dragon_.

Holy _shit_.

I cower behind my boulder so long that snow starts falling again, and it gets cold enough that I’d better start moving if I plan on ever moving again. It’s been kind of quiet for a while.

Ominously quiet.

There’s a shadow, way down at the base of the mountain, that could be the two combatants.

On the one hand, I want exactly no part of that fight. On the other, I’ll freeze pretty quickly up here.

So, down it is.

I manage to sled down most of the slope on my duffel, landing face-first in a snowdrift at the bottom. It’s freezing and kind of embarrassing, but I don’t break anything so I’ll count it a win.

Though I can’t _wait_ to never see the Nibel Mountains _ever_ again.

Turns out the shadow was, in fact, the dragon, looking really dead and way too big to be real. Vincent, however, is nowhere in sight.

“Hello?” I call, softly. No need to alert every predator in the area that there’s something helpless and tasty here.

There’s no response, but I can hear a sort of shuffling.

Probably I don’t want anything to do with that, but I don’t see that I have much choice.

I round the dragon’s head, and yeah, I so did not want to see that.

Vincent is looking blue and purple and sort of fluffy, so this must be the Galian Beast. It (he?) is taller than I expected.

My brain keeps trying to supply these little observations, so I don’t have to acknowledge that he’s _eating_ the dragon.

I used to love the Swiss Family Robinson, which has an illustration of them stripping the blubber off a whale. It was so big that they could actually walk around inside it.

This is just like that, Galian is ripping hunks of flesh off wherever he can reach and stuffing it into his mouth, carving out a hole in the side of the dragon.

I have to run a few feet away and throw up. That’s just… ewwwwww.

“I am never eating meat again,” I promise myself, rinsing my mouth out with snow.

Ergh.

I hide in the snow for a bit, then my newly born survival instincts take over. The snow is cold. The dragon, even though it’s dead now, is not.

I creep over by its head—on the opposite side of the teeth, just in case—and lean against it’s warm, scaly hide.

And wait.

~*~

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I know Vincent is shaking me.

I’m stiff and chilled and my butt feels frozen from sitting in the snow, and my brain must be sluggish as well because it takes me a whole minute to realize why Vincent is looking tense and I’m sleeping on top of a dragon.

“Uh,” I say, and have to concentrate on taking deep breaths through my mouth to keep from throwing up again. That certainly won’t help the situation in the least. “So that was Galian. Bit taller than I expected.”

Vincent just sort of blinks, which is understandable, because that’s possibly the most inane comment ever.

“So are we good to go then?” I ask, deliberately not looking at the dead dragon. There is nothing there I want to see, and I so, so don’t want to know how much of it got eaten. “Burning daylight, and all that?”

Vincent blinks again. Clearly he very much does not want to think about it, either, but doesn’t know how to move past the elephant in the room. Dragon, rather.

I cast about for a distraction. “Also cold here? Time to move?”

He looks at me.

I look at him.

And then he starts walking, leaving me scrambling to keep up.

Vincent is really resourceful, which is surprising in the sense that I always thought of him as a city Turk, but I also traveled across half a continent because of his ability to handle weird situations, so, maybe not that surprising after all. He finds a cave and gets a fire going, and I drink melted snow and try and ignore the hunger pangs. I’m helped with that by my sincere desire to never eat again after the afternoon’s… events.

One more day of freaking out, I promise myself, curling up in all the clothes that I have with me. Then I’ll deal with it.

~*~

Except Vincent doesn’t want to deal with it, and is that man ever a master of avoidance. Every time I so much as _think_ of bringing up the topic of his demons, he vanishes. It’s very frustrating.

Add that to his Bella Swan levels of brooding, and it’s a good thing he’s pretty.

Okay, that’s not fair. He’s had a ridiculously shitty life, and he really is being very helpful just now when he has no good reason to be. I wouldn’t have lasted one day out here by myself, and as character flaws go, a tendency to eat carrion is… weird, and gross, but not dangerous. To me. Hopefully.

And Vincent pays attention to my needs, even if he refuses to talk about anything at all, so small, dead creatures and pathetic, half-frozen vegetables have started mysteriously appearing by the fire at night.

My resolve to avoid eating forever lasts approximately two seconds once I get my hands on something edible. The first small rodent-like thing doesn’t get eaten—turns out you can’t put it in the fire with the fur still on, oops—but the second one doesn’t turn out too bad.

Really, having to skin a whatever this is and eat it on a stick really puts the whole devouring-a-dragon thing in perspective. That was pretty disgusting, but so is everything about the process of transforming small woodland creature into food. Those in glass houses, and so forth.

Vincent doesn’t eat when he’s Vincent-shaped, as far as I can tell. It’s probably not dangerous, considering he was in that coffin for however many years and seems… functional, if not fine.

Still, all things considered I’m grateful to leave the mountains behind. If I never see snow again, it will be too soon. The grass looks so much less frightening now that I’ve seen the Nibel Mountains.

“Things are looking up,” I say, which, _stupid._ The actual second the words are out of my mouth, there’s some movement in the grass, could be literally anything because all I can see is the grass swaying, but just like that Vincent is big and purple and just gone.

I slump down on the grass, alone on a giant, monster-infested plain with an entire ocean between me and Sephiroth.

“Okay,” I say to the sky, “that one was on me.”

Most of my wilderness knowledge is acquired from tv shows and books. I’ve been camping, but only the kind where your car is twenty yards away and you have a portable grill with you. It’s basically a miracle on par with walking on water that I started that fire in the Mansion.

I guess I’d thought that, since I wasn’t actually on the mountains and not standing in a snowbank, there was no need to be concerned about the cold, or repeat that miracle.

Wrong. So, so wrong.

The sun goes down with no sign of Vincent in any form, and so does the temperature. There’s no wood here that I can see, and starting a fire in the middle of all this dry grass seems like a fantastically bad idea anyway, so instead I pace back and forth, ten steps up and ten steps down, rubbing my arms and trying not to panic.

Vincent could make fire with magic, which would be super useful _if he were here_.

Eventually I start to get really, really tired, enough to forget why it’s a bad idea to curl up in a tiny, shivering ball and try to sleep until the sun comes back up.

~*~

I wake up wonderfully, gloriously warm. The sun is just edging over the horizon, enough that I can see the morning mist evaporating. It doesn’t seem to be giving off all that much heat yet, though.

So, why am I warm?

I sit up, or rather, try to. I’m pinned to the ground by some kind of restraint.

The first thing I do is panic. Just, total, utter panic, with flailing and screeching and thrashing and _oh god Hojo has me I am so, so fucked._

Then there’s a long, low, displeased sort of growl, right in my ear.

It cuts right to that recently resurfaced lizard brain, and I freeze completely, like a rabbit before a hawk.

Okay, okay, try think. Announcing my helplessness to every predator in a hundred miles isn’t going to do me a bit of good, and neither is lying here trembling until something worse happens. I’m not a rabbit, I’m a human being with a brain that I should try actually using.

Right. Deep breath.

Even Hojo probably doesn’t conduct experiments out in the middle of fields. I’m not on any kind of exam table, I’m outside. I can move my arms and legs, obviously, as evidenced by my earlier flailing. And even if there’s apparently some kind of monster behind me, I haven’t been eaten _yet._

There’s a distinct huff of warm air on the back of my neck, and my skin tries to crawl off but I refuse to panic again, just, no panic allowed.

Maybe I’m being saved for food later? Like that yeti thing on Hoth?

Not a helpful direction for my thoughts to take. Okay. Gather the evidence. Determine the best course of action based on said evidence.

The thing restraining me is a limb around my waist. It looks more or less like an arm, not a zombie limb or a Marlboro tentacle, so there’s a bit of good news already.

It’s also a familiar shade of purplish-blue.

What.

My assessment of the situation takes a dizzying, ninety-degree turn.

I haven’t been captured, I’m not in danger. Vincent must have come back during the night, still Galian-shaped, and… realized I was freezing to death? Acted on some dormant pack instinct?

Right on cue, Galian stirs, and _licks_ the back of my neck, sort of like a ginormous, bipedal, weird-ass dog.

Ergh, now I’m all sticky and gross.

Responding to something—or nothing, I don’t even know at this point—the arm starts to shimmer, and presumably the rest of him, too, and there’s a truly disgusting amount of cracking and squelching as bones realign and skin stretches and I really, really need to stop thinking about this. I sincerely hope that Vincent is unconscious for these transformations.

He doesn’t move at all, so I’m still basically pinned to the ground, but I’m no longer in fear of my life. Actually, I could think of a lot worse things than effectively cuddling with Vincent Valentine. He’s tall and inhumanly warm and the cape is way softer than it looks.

I make sure to memorize the sensation, because sure enough, about two seconds later he tenses and then throws himself backwards, rolling smoothly to his feet and looking at me like I’m the guilty party here.

I try to look as unimpressed as possible. “ _Now_ are you ready to talk?”

He looks at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

It’s probably rude to roll my eyes, but I do it anyway. “Look, I’m not mad about… whatever you think I’m mad about. I told you that I already know practically your entire life story; I definitely knew about the demon stuff. I’ll admit that it’s a little… stranger… experiencing it in real life rather than just reading about it, but this isn’t a dealbreaker. All I’m trying to say is, you’ve pretty much been in that coffin the whole time you’ve had these abilities, right? So you haven’t really had to live with them, as such. Maybe we can problem-solve.”

He blinks.

“So… I was thinking, you’re sort of like the Hulk. Which, forget I said that, it would take too long to explain the reference. What I mean is, you haven’t been eating or sleeping or making any concessions to temperature or weather, so far as I can tell, so maybe your body is taking care of that stuff for you. Maybe if you ate something now, while you’re, uh, Vincent-shaped, you won’t feel compelled to turn into Galian and try and eat a whole dragon. Or,” I wave my hands in his direction, “uh, you kind of have feathers in your teeth. Wasn’t going to say anything, but… yeah.”

He looks pretty revolted, but after making sure he doesn’t have anything else on his face he just takes a deep, steadying breath and moves on. “Perhaps,” he concedes.

Well, at least he’s thinking about it. Given all the weird shit he has to deal with post-Hojo, he’s actually coping pretty well, all things considered.

“Maybe a tent?” I suggest hopefully.

“No towns,” he says.

Oh, well.

He stands there for a whole minute, not moving, not even breathing as far as I can tell, and I’m a little worried about what’s going on in his head, but when he’s done with his internal monologue (though I guess in his case it’s more like a… quintologue?) he fixes me with this really, really intense stare.

“…yes?”

“Tell me about Sephiroth.”

So I do. I start with Crisis Core, then everything I can remember from the wiki pages on Before Crisis, through the original game, then Advent Children, and top it off with the Deepground part of Dirge of Cerberus, jumping back and forth in the timeline when something new occurs to me. It takes actual days to get through this massive info dump, and he doesn’t respond, doesn’t scoff, hardly even blinks.

When I’ve finally wound down, that’s when he starts in on his million and one questions. It reminds me that he used to be a Turk, because he’s extracting information I didn’t even know I had, sorting out cause and effect, when certain projects must have started, and every single tiny detail about Sephiroth’s entire personality.

Breaking it all down takes us all the way to Costa del Sol, across the ocean, across more grass and rivers and mountains. All the way to Midgar.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Vincent is scouting for accommodations in the slums, I think I’ve at least impressed him with the length and breadth of my delusions. I don’t blame him for finding my story rather unbelievable, but I’m pretty sure he’ll accept it in the end. He believed enough to come to Midgar, and there’s dozens of corroborations just waiting for him to find them.

The apartment’s kind of a dive, but it is the slums. At least it has four walls and a roof.

“So what’s the plan?” I ask, checking under the bed for cockroaches. Knowing Shinra, they’re probably mako-enhanced and breathe fire or something.

“The plan?”

I dust off my knees before facing him. “Yeah, you know, the plan. I think it’s pretty clear that the world would be better off if it _didn’t_ almost end three or four times in the next twenty-odd years. You know as much as I do now, and you have that admirably twisty mind. Where do we start?”

“Hojo is dead.”

“Yeah, probably a good start. Wait. _Is_ dead? Like, already?”

“I broke into his office and shot him this morning.”

I blink rapidly a few times. “Okay, okay, processing… well, that was easier than I expected. And, he didn’t turn into anything squishy?”

“Jenova’s influence must not have taken hold yet.”

“Huh, guess so.” I’m still kind of weirded out by the casual discussion of murder, but, well, _Hojo_. He’s completely insane and doesn’t even want world domination, he just wants to annihilate all life on the Planet as part of his weird, perverted fantasies about rotting alien corpses, and eww did I just go to a bad mental place there. Besides, it’s already done. “So, did you figure out how old Sephiroth is then?”

“It is difficult to access information without being caught. I am not longer familiar with the systems, and none of my old access codes or contacts are... available.”

For Vincent, that’s practically a speech. He must be feeling a lot better about the world now that Hojo isn’t in it. Or frustrated by all these new-fangled computers.

“The Wutai War you mentioned has actually been going on for several years, though war has not officially been declared,” he says.

“Probably calling it ‘quelling an uprising’ or some such.”

He inclines his head. “Sephiroth has joined the SOLDIER program and is advancing quickly through the ranks, but he has not yet been deployed.”

“Okay, well, I told you how confusing the timeline is, so I really have no idea what that means for upcoming events. I _think_ the War ended pretty quickly once Sephiroth was deployed, but I can’t be sure. Did you hear anything about Genesis and Angeal?”

He shakes his head. “I was only able to glance at Hojo’s notes before the alarms went off. He doesn’t care about Hollander’s projects.”

“So basically we need more information. Can’t you just, like, cut your hair and put on a suit?”

He gives me a look.

“Kidding.” Sort of.

“I would be recognized,” he says. “Either as the assassin from today or from my old IDs.”

“Well if _you_ can’t go… wait. You want _me_ to join the Turks?”

He scoffs. “Of course not.”

~*~

I’d like to state, for the record, that I hate Vincent Valentine. Just, everything about him.

“Hello. I’d like to enlist in the army.” I try to force a smile.

The recruitment guy looms behind his desk, looking supremely unimpressed. “Oh?”

You and me both, buddy. “Yes. I’m excited about the opportunities a career with Shinra has to offer.”

Here in Midgar, you can tell the recruitment offices by the way there are posters of Sephiroth plastered over every surface, looking tall and intimidating and like a model for a very naughty magazine. Isn’t he still a teenager in this time? It’s actually really disturbing.

Recruitment guy catches me looking at the posters—not that there’s anywhere else _to_ look—and draws all the wrong conclusions.

“I see.”

I fight to keep my expression neutral. I don’t care what this random guy thinks of me, anyway.

“Any special skills?”

“Uh, no.” Not any relevant ones, anyway.

“Prior experience?”

“No.”

“PT score?”

“Huh?”

He glares.

“Look, can’t you just give me a flyer or a brochure or something?”

He glares harder, all intimidating bulk and stony silence, but I’ve out-waited the best of them.

Finally he relents and tosses me a packet, then goes back to his paperwork.

I skim it quickly. It’s all pretty straightforward, and somewhat terrifyingly simple.

Citizen of Midgar of one of its territories? Well, I’m _in_ Midgar, and Vincent’s hard at work whipping up fake documents, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

Desire to further the interests of Shinra, Inc.? Well, Old Man Shinra probably has a strong interest in his own continuing existence, so really, if you think about it… yeah, still not me, but I can fake it.

Still possessing both eyes, four limbs, and the usual number of fingers and toes? Yep, and probably they just want to know that so Hojo can take them off later, the bastard.

Or, I guess that’s Hollander’s job now.

After that it’s just the physical standards, and holy crap that’s a lot of work. I’m not exactly in great shape, though my recent cross-country jaunt has helped a lot. Still, sixty sit-ups in a minute? A _minimum_ of twenty good push-ups? Shit, I have to run a whole mile and a half?

At least I’m a good swimmer.

And I’m going to make sure Vincent knows how pissed I am about this.

~*~

Somehow a guy who was tortured for years and locked in a coffin for almost two decades isn’t too impressed by my whining about having to run. Go figure.

He does suggest a training program to get me up to speed (ha).

The little brochure said that testing is every Friday morning at 0600, and I decide to give it a shot. If by some miracle I pass, that’s a whole lot of running I can dodge, and if not, I can start putting together a narrative of plucky slum lass who works hard and tries her best and never gives up. Sort of reality tv meets Naruto. Maybe someone in Shinra has a heart.

Or they’ll eventually get tired of looking at me and figure the Science Department can always use fresh bodies.

“Don’t get into SOLDIER,” Vincent says, when I’m on my way out.

“There is absolutely no chance of that happening.”

And I was so, so right.

It starts out with a train ride above-Plate, with a bunch of people in suits pretending to hold their nose at me. Classy. The guy in charge of testing obviously had the same idea, because I get stuck in a group of other slum-dwellers, obviously desperate to change their circumstances.

And then, hell.

My only consolation is that I’m not that absolute worst. One guy collapsed from heat exhaustion and had to be taken to the hospital. I at least finished, though I puked twice and that bastard discounted half my push-ups. Even though I totally did them right, no cheating.

Vincent is, again, unsympathetic as I whimper and try to stretch my screaming muscles.

Whatever. “Zack carried Cloud across half of Gaia. Sam carried Frodo all the way up Mt. Doom. I’ve got this.” I grit my teeth and reached for my toes.

~*~

So that was obviously a dumbass thing to do. I dutifully follow Vincent’s training program, which is agonizing but I don’t pass out, which is nice. As a kind of reward for good behavior, or something, he starts lecturing me on the history of the world, since I don’t know most of it and am about to go undercover. He tries to give me some tips about materia, but it just won’t work for me. Go figure. It’s just my luck to appear in an imaginary world with cool magic and be unable to use it.

As far as I can tell, he’s just wandering around the slums all day talking to people. He’s the Turk, I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

“So is Aerith here?” I ask one night.

“Yes, I found the church.”

I was sort of hoping we would be early enough to save Ifalna, but I didn’t actually think we would be. Still, it’s disappointing. “Did you ask her about the Healing Rain?”

“She was expecting me.”

“Huh. Well, she is an Ancient.”

Vincent glared.

Guess he hadn’t listened when I talked about how cool she is. “So is that a yes on the Rain, then?”

“I wasn’t able to explain to her how it’s created, and was unwilling to explain that she originally made it after her death. She promised to look into it.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess. That’s Plan A for sorting out Genesis underway, how about Plan B?”

He glowers. “We should just kill him.”

“I’m not sure that’s actually possible. He’s supposed to be chosen by the Planet.”

“According to you, so am I.”

“I’ll take this to mean that you haven’t asked Chaos if there’s anything he can do. That being Plan B, if you recall.”

He turns away, which is answer enough.

“Well, I’m going for a run. If you’re going to kick off the Apocalypse trying to assassinate Genesis, please feel free to do so in the next forty-five minutes or so.”

~*~

I’m lucky Vincent is such an obvious badass, because the slums are really rough. No one bothers our apartment, which is right near the train, and he earns or steals enough money that I can take the train up daily to run in some of the parks.

Yes, there are parks. Nothing green grows below the Plate, except presumably in Aerith’s church, but above-Plate there are small, fanatically organized walking paths with scrawny shrubs and some very sickly-looking trees. It’s as good a place to run as any, especially once I get some cleaner clothes and can pass as an above-Plate person.

It’s very crowded, like glimpses I’ve seen of Tokyo or Beijing on tv, and there’s a haze of mako pollution over everything. It makes running very interesting, and I have a designated trash bin about halfway through my route to be sick in.

The food is also… weird. It still falls in the same basic categories of grain, vegetable, meat, but nothing is quite familiar. There are nights where I wake up salivating over a cheeseburger, and I don’t even like cheeseburgers.

But I get used to it. My stomach settles, my body gets stronger, and I make it through a whole run without hurling. It might be time to show up for the Friday morning test again.

Also, I’ve finally found the silver lining in joining Shinra. It may be full of immoral, world-destroying assholes, but the barracks are located above the Plate. That thing is seriously creepy. Like, instant claustrophobia. Any time I have to actually go down to the slums again, it’s a conscious struggle not to cower instinctively away from it, like it might fall and crush me any moment.

And of course, it doesn’t help that I know it will, in fact, fall and crush people at one point, though hopefully not me personally. Or anyone, for that matter, since that’s one of the things I want to prevent. If by some miracle we haven’t fixed things by then, I’ll push the Turks out of the helicopter myself. That was a seriously jerk move.

Objectively it’s kind of impressive how hardy the people of Midgar are. They could give Sunnydale residents a run for their money. If it isn’t your run-of-the-mill pollution, random monster encounters or economic oppression, it’s Genesis invading Shinra HQ, Diamond WEAPON attacking, Meteor, Deepground, the list goes on. It’s a wonder anyone was even left to live in Edge.

But none of that is going to happen—well, at least not the stuff that isn’t already happening. Vincent’s going to stop it, and I’m going to help.

Which means I have to get into the army, the sooner the better. Even Vincent can’t cure all the world’s ills flying blind.

~*~

“Well, go me, I guess,” I say, showing Vincent my test results. “I scored two points more than the bare minimum, and my documents passed muster, so that’s pretty much that. The recruiter didn’t come right out and say that they’re desperate for more warm bodies on the front, but it was pretty well implied.”

“Even with Hojo gone, you should avoid the SOLDIER program.”

“Yeah, there is less than zero chance that I’m getting anywhere near SOLDIER. I don’t think the mako-enhancement even works on women. How do you want me to contact you? Did you get a burner phone or something?”

He gives me an unimpressed eyebrow. “Text only in an emergency. It doesn’t matter what, so long as it’s nothing incriminating. I’ll find you.”

“Okay then, that’s not ominous at all.”

“For regular reports, there is a bar popular with recruits at the first train stop below the Plate. Once a week, during your leave.”

“Great, because I really want to spend my two free hours in a gross, overcrowded bar.”

“Two free hours ensuring the peaceful future of the Planet,” he reminds me.

“Right. Guess that puts things in perspective.”

~*~

Being in the army sucks. There is a rule for absolutely every freaking thing, someone is always shouting at me, and I’m spending even more time running and jumping and exercising than I was when I was training for the test. “Rest” time consists of classwork that might as well be called Indoctrination 101, or, Yay Shinra.

The one thing I had braced myself for was terrible food, but it’s not actually that much worse than what I scavenged on the walk here or could buy below-Plate. However, the sergeants have this fantastically annoying habit of periodically making us get our food, then just toss it in the bin and go back to training. It’s supposed to prepare us for adverse conditions, when we might not have access to food, but I’m pretty sure it’s just sadism.

I am not thriving here and never expected to, so the blatant favoritism doesn’t annoy me as much as it does some others. Anyone who shows any kind of promise at all gets recruited into one of the actually relevant branches, like the pilots or the Turks or the much-coveted SOLDIER. They scarcely bother to pretend that the regular infantry is anything more than cannon fodder.

It’s three weeks before I’ve earned the privilege of two unsupervised hours, and that’s just enough time to get to the bar that’s even more horrible than I imagined.

“Next time you can join the army,” I say, slumping on a stool across from Vincent. There’s an art form to slumping on a stool, and I’m determined to master it. “It sucks.”

His mouth quirks in what could almost be the start of a smile. “Did you learn anything else?”

I decide to sit up straighter; my hair is sticking to the table and I really just don’t want to get any more closely acquainted with it. “You were right about the regular troops; they’re getting slaughtered in Wutai, and Shinra isn’t too broken up about it.”

“Are you in any danger?”

“Not yet, but we should wrap this up within the year, to be on the safe side. I guess they used to have two years of training, it was like a school, and that’s gotten shorter and shorter as the war goes on. They’ve pared the whole curriculum down to just thirteen months, now.”

“Can you get access to any of the SOLDIERs before then?”

“Highly unlikely. They don’t waste their time with the lowly infantry, and I’ve already been warned about a thousand times not to get involved with them, er, romantically.”

“Oh?”

I try not to shudder. “Mako poisoning. There were pictures.”

His face goes all tense, which is about when I realize that that might apply to him, too, in which case that was a super tactless way to break the news.

“Um.”

“But you do hear about the SOLDIERs?”

“Some. They’re basically like celebrities, especially the three big ones. Gossiping about Sephiroth is a favored leisure activity in the barracks, and the other two are fairly well known. Angeal has a reputation of being kindhearted, and a lot of guys think he’s their way into the program. That one’s popular enough that I think he must have already taken Zack as a student, though no one’s mentioned him by name. And Genesis is, well, moody and kind of terrifying, so there’s always a story going around about him.”

“Hmm.”

Like a switch being thrown, the bar full of desperately carousing young recruits suddenly starts filing out. “Guess it’s time to get the train.”

“Next week, same time,” Vincent says.

~*~

One thing I can say about military life, it thrives on patterns. I don’t really get less miserable, but I get used to it. And I always know what I’m supposed to be doing and what’s expected of me. Every second. Of every day.

The weeks only distinguish themselves by my conversations with Vincent.

I confirm that Zack is a SOLDIER Third Class, and dutifully pass this on. Apparently he has the highest PT score of any recruit (Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal never enlisted, they were accepted straight into the SOLDIER program), and didn’t even finish Basic before Angeal snatched him up.

Angeal kind of shot himself in the foot there, because now everyone is falling all over themselves to match Zack’s feat and earn his attention.

The next week I’m able to tell him all about the most notorious recruit, who reduced the sergeant to a sputtering rage in about ten seconds, cheated with great creativity at virtually every exercise, then got hauled up for disciplinary measures and mouthed off to the board, too. The Turks had to be called in.

I’m about ninety-five percent certain that’s Reno.

It’s good to know a little more about where we are in the timeline and how many potential allies are nearby, but the first actually useful bit of information comes the following week. Since SOLDIER is practically everyone’s incentive, we get a fair amount of information about the program. Hojo’s death is officially announced as a lab accident (President Shinra barely bothered to pretend sorrow at his loss) and Hollander has stepped up as Head of the Science Department and the SOLDIER program. There were concerns it would shut down without Hojo’s genius, but apparently Hollander managed to crib from his notes and throw something together.

“Good,” Vincent says. “Events should not deviate too much from your foreknowledge.”

“So Genesis is still the next big crisis. Any progress on that front?”

“Aerith needs more time.”

He doesn’t say anything about talking to Chaos. I decide not to press. “Have you considered popping down to Banora and asking the Goddess? She’ll probably talk to you.”

Vincent ignores that. “There may be another way to approach the issue.”

“…and that is?”

“Why did you not mention the problem of Jenova to me while we were still in Nibelheim?”

“Oh, uh. Because I’m an idiot? And you were in a bit of a hurry, as I recall.”

“It seems that even if the worst comes to pass, and Genesis goes mad and tries to drag Sephiroth with him, without Jenova’s influence matters will not escalate to the same degree.”

I think that over. “That makes sense. The big Jenova crisis isn’t imminent, but as far as I can tell she’s been influencing Sephiroth his whole life. Getting rid of her sooner can only help.”

“I’ll leave tonight.”

“Wait, what?”

He gives me a look like I’m being unforgivably slow. “For Nibelheim. To destroy Jenova. You said you are unsure when the failed rocket launch occurs, so it is better to go sooner.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a good point. It will be a massive pain in the ass to get her off this planet without the rocket.”

“Obviously.”

Jerk. “Give Cid my best. He’s pretty cute, you know.”

Vincent glares, then glides out of the room. How he does that in such a crowded bar, in those boots, I’ll never know.

~*~

Two days later—two days!—Sephiroth is deployed to Wutai. All the barracks are emptied to go with him; the infantry, the SOLDIERs, the poor kid who joined yesterday, Genesis and Angeal and Zack, Tron, who is considered the first SOLDIER since all the secrets about Project G aren’t widely known.

Oh, and me.


	5. Chapter 5

Did I say military training sucks? Actual deployment reaches previously unheard of levels of suckitude.

I have time to dash off a quick text to Vincent, telling him where I’m going, then my PHS gets confiscated along with everyone else’s. It’s supposed to be a security measure, but they also don’t want any news to get out that hasn’t been carefully filtered through the PR department. No embedded journalists in Shinra.

I haven’t finished the mandatory firearms training yet, so I’m not allowed to pack my own gun. That’s how ludicrously underprepared I am.

Heidegger has to be behind this decision. _All_ the Shinra executives can’t be this stupid.

And it’s not just the raw recruits getting rushed out, either. There are six bases in Wutai, and only two SOLDIERs First Class. Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal are promoted on the landing pad and assigned their own commands, along with some guy I don’t recognize. He’s wearing a standard uniform, so he’s probably not PC-quality and isn’t going to last long.

Either all the officers have been killed and they’re desperate, or Heidegger’s even dumber than I realized. Angeal is probably leader material, but Sephiroth is a young genius with no social skills and Genesis is… Genesis… so I can’t see how this is going to turn out well.

I can’t help but wonder if Hojo’s death accelerated things somehow, or if this is how it went the first time. I mean, I know Sephiroth’s amazing, but talk about being thrown in the deep end. No wonder he went off the deep end. At least Genesis and Angeal get an experienced Second Class assigned to them; as far as I can tell it’s just Sephiroth and a bunch of cannon fodder—excuse me, troopers.

There’s a line out the door in front of the quartermaster’s, where we get our gear. By the time my number is called, the uniform’s rather patchy, and the winter boots don’t fit.

I make sure to steal plenty of newspaper on my way past the administrative offices, and then it’s time to get on a plane.

~*~

Not being trusted with a gun probably saves my life.

I don’t get sent out to fight immediately, because what am I going to do, throw rocks at them? So I spend a lot of time being yelled at by whoever’s closest and doing a whole pile of random tasks to settle the huge influx of people into a base that’s still being built.

I’m at Angeal’s base, not that I see him or Zack or anyone else I recognize. Despite Heidegger’s best efforts, there’s still a chain of command, and my immediate superior is old and extremely cranky and a raging misogynist but he does care about the people under his command. He’s visibly disgusted by babies like me who barely know which end of a gun points at the other guy.

No one in the recruitment office or the barracks cared about anything other than how well I followed orders, but he does everything but ask for my résumé. I have to scramble to find a way to describe my work experience in a way that makes sense in this universe, but he gets the idea that I’m organized and detail-oriented, and assigns me to the mess tent.

Peeling potato-like things and rehydrating something that sort of resembles oatmeal isn’t exactly glamorous, but it keeps me away from the front lines and it’s important work. I may have many, many qualms about the righteousness of Shinra’s cause, but I don’t have any objections to trying to make things a little easier for the poor schmucks who got stuck fighting for it.

Every evening there’s a big bonfire in the center of camp, and that’s where everyone goes to get the (heavily edited) news. We only hear about victories, and it’s objectively sort of interesting to be on the ground floor of the birth of the Sephiroth-worship.

Oh, his meteoric (I still wince to hear it put that way) rise through the ranks is all over Shinra’s recruitment materials, along with his face (and abs), but he was still just a guy. An extremely hot, extremely accomplished guy, but a guy.

Now, he’s a legend.

You might think that here in Wutai, when guys are out killing each other and trying not to get killed every day and it’s muddy and rainy and _absolutely infested with bugs_ , that under the circumstances, you’d think no one would have time for fangirling (or fanboying, as the case may be).

It’s just the opposite.

Since no one wants to think about bug bites and the lousy weather and their inevitable, impending death, they think about Sephiroth. And Genesis, to a lesser degree (which must piss him off no end). Not really Angeal; he’s a practical, down-to-earth sort of guy, and just doesn’t inspire _worship_ to the same degree.

But Sephiroth is inhumanly fast and graceful, he has that thing where he never seems to get dirty or have split ends, and he has those unusual looks, so he’s the subject of intense discussion. And desire.

I still haven’t been able to confirm how old he is, and really, really hope that he’s not fifteen, which was how old I _thought_ he was during the War.

I peel the not-potatoes and scoop the not-oatmeal and people gossip and fight and die.

Selfishly, I’m glad I don’t know anyone here well. Chances are they’re just going to die anyway.

~*~

Without anything better to do, I keep trying to gather information for Vincent. There’s no guarantee I’ll live long enough to share any of it with him, but that’s the kind of negative thinking I’m trying so hard to distract myself from.

It becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that my foreknowledge is clouding my perceptions of my observations. I keep thinking of Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal as a group, and am continually surprised when one is mentioned but not the others. It takes me way too long to realize that that’s stupid.

So I try to clear my mind and just listen.

Obviously, it isn’t common knowledge that the three of them are a part of secret Science Department experiments that gave them superhuman powers. Genesis is a prodigy with materia, and Angeal is built like a tank and extremely skilled with a sword, but they’re only above-average with each other’s particular skill. Even Sephiroth is considered extraordinarily talented, not a superior lifeform.

Well, except in the looks department. If I have to hear one more thing about his “exotic” hair and eyes…

They didn’t even enter the program at the same time. Angeal was first, with his obvious strength and power. From what I can gather, Genesis was only a few weeks behind him, but it doesn’t seem to be widely-known that the two are from the same town and were childhood friends.

Sephiroth entered SOLDIER at least a full year after those two, and they don’t appear to be great friends or anything yet. At least not in public.

Once I have all the facts, it’s obvious that I’m just confusing people asking about the three of them together. They only recently became First Class, in an obviously rushed promotion, and there are other, older and more experienced SOLDIERs.

This is interesting to know, but not terribly helpful. Sephiroth is catapulting his way to fame, but by all reports doesn’t know what to do with it, stoically doing his duty, slaughtering Wutaians by the dozens, and ignoring the men and women throwing themselves at him.

That might actually be one of the reasons Genesis isn’t getting as famous as quickly. Sephiroth has a reputation for being untouchable, and Genesis, well… doesn’t. Literally everyone knows that he’s really, extremely gay and, um, very open-minded. He’s apparently _very_ creative about getting around the restrictions they described in that traumatizing lecture about mako-poisoning.

Unfortunately, the gossip mill is barely turning for anything besides Sephiroth and Genesis. I have to rely on the heavily-censored official version to learn about the course of the War, and the launch of Shinra No. 26 isn’t even on the radar.

I really, really hope Vincent’s mission is successful. And I’m glad I told him everything I know, just in case.

~*~

It’s kind of hard to keep track of time under these conditions, but I think it’s been a few weeks, maybe even a few months, before something finally changes. I’ve sort of defaulted into being in charge of the mess, in every way but officially. I harass the supply guys into actually giving us supplies, plan the menus (not that that’s hard), and ration out the food.

It’s getting harder and harder for supplies to get through, so there’s less of everything to go around.

But just now there’s a massive amount of stuff getting flown in, because there’s going to be a conference, right here on our base, and pretty much anyone who’s anyone except President Shinra himself is going to be there.

Security is ridiculous, but I don’t have anything to do with that.

I do get to prepare the menu for the conference, which has garnishes and sauces and paired wines. It’s obscene, considering what the rank-and-file are stuck with.

Once someone notices that I’m good at that, I get assigned other tasks. Definitely did not think that one through.

I help put up the tent, which is decorated on the inside with what I can only call ‘brothel chic’. There’s a massive, round, elaborately carved wooden table, complete which matching chairs, which must have been a bitch to transport and is completely unnecessary. There’s plush red carpets and a tablecloth richly embroidered with gold, to match the interior of the tent.

There’s delicate dishware and at least three forks per place setting, and it’s a struggle not to lie in ambush and stab someone with one of them. I can tell just by this set-up that these pompous jackasses aren’t going to accomplish shit.

I restrain myself for two reasons. One, the seat just inside the door has a little placecard that says ‘Department of Administrative Research’ and I am just not that brave. Or stupid. Two, I finally have an opportunity to acquire actually useful information. Even just the fact that this meeting is taking place is more interesting than anything I’ve learned so far.

Also, Genesis is going to be here. I don’t _think_ that VR Room incident has happened yet, but maybe I’ll be able to tell from his face.

You know, if he’s pissier than usual.

I’m busy setting up a “mini” bar that occupies the entire long side of the tent wall when Angeal more or less catapults into the tent, almost upsetting the table. It has to be him. He’s got the buster sword strapped to his back, and is built like comic-book Superman. Or the Hulk.

“Can I help you?” I ask. “Uh, sir?” Yeah, I’m never going to cut it in the army.

He blinks at me a few times. “Cadet, what are you doing here?”

“Setting up? I could go, if you need the room.”

We look at each other for a bit. He’s not actually as tall as I first thought he was, it’s just that he’s really solid. The uniform doesn’t really fit right over all his muscles. Bodybuilder problems, I guess. He’s also frowning, hopefully just in general and not at me in particular.

We’re all pretty grimy and thinner than we started, out here in Wutai, and I’m sure my hair looks like something crawled onto my head and died there. Not the stuff great first impressions are made of.

“This is your work?” he asks, looking around the tent.

I so do not want to be associated with this decorating scheme, but “Yes, sir. Mostly.”

He nods. “Very well. Carry on; you can help serve when the executives get here.”

Yay. Although truthfully it’s the best thing that could have happened.

“And Cadet.” He’s staring at one of the fancy lamps like it disgusts him. A sign of good taste, that. “Maybe clean up first?”

Even knowing how gross I must look, it’s hard not to be offended. But it’s a pleasant novelty to be asked, sort of, instead of yet more barked orders. Also, being present for this meeting is an unparalleled opportunity. Mustn’t lose sight of that. “Yes, sir.”

Now, where the hell am I going to find a clean uniform in this backwater?

Angeal—I can’t even remember his rank anymore, it changes so often—will just have to settle for a quick rinse and a slightly damp uniform. At least I can arrange my hair in a more-or-less regulation bun.

I rush back to the tent to find it full of frantic activity. I didn’t think I would be the only one with this assignment, but still. There are way too many people here.

Probably trying to curry favor with the higher-ups, those ladder-climbing sycophants.

There’s a lot of standing around making it very obvious that you’re present, hoping to catch someone’s attention, so I get on with the actual movement of food and drinks from the specially-delivered crates to the table. And try not to salivate too much.

A loud sound halts all activity. It could be the Wutaians discovering frag grenades, or an ancient walrus slowly dying, or the mating call of a rabid Marlboro.

Turns out it’s Heidegger, laughing.

Two Turks emerge from a helicopter, crisp blue suits looking wildly out of place amidst all the muck, and like two tugboats leading a barge, they pull Heidegger along in their wake. That is a big, big man. He’s not exactly fat, just, very substantial. He has to be nearly as tall as Vincent, at least three times as wide, with focused eyes and a fierce frown, barely visible under his bristling facial hair.

Seriously; it covers his whole face. It’s like a living thing in its own right.

His uniform isn’t the same primary color green as in the show; it’s camo-colored, very military-chic, and his medals are slightly tarnished, just a little worn. Like he’s actually earned them. He looks less like a caricature and more like a younger, bulkier Sean Connery from _The Hunt for Red October_ , but with a huge beard. Or Captain Ahab.

Not that that’s actually all that comforting, when it comes down to it. Ahab knew how to fuck shit up.

Ridiculous laugh aside, he walks with confidence, and his eyes are bright and alert. I might owe him a mental apology for all the nasty thoughts I had about his planning abilities; he looks way too practical to be the one who organized the shitshow of the Wutai campaign.

Smart money’s on the President.

I follow Heidegger’s procession all the way to his seat before turning back to the door, and almost face-plant in some very substantial cleavage.

I back up a few steps. Ah, this must be Scarlet. The only woman even mentioned in connection to Shinra, except the plot-required mothers of various characters.

She doesn’t look much like how I imagined her, either. Oh, she’s tall, made even taller by her high heels, and she has long, gorgeous blonde hair currently in an elaborate pile on the top of her head. But she isn’t wearing her signature red dress; she looks like she took the SOLDIER uniform and tried to make it sexy. Well, sexier. Except for the purple, SOLDIER uniforms are pretty fine. It’s distinctly feminine, form-fitting and with smatterings of delicate embroidery, and done in a pastel pink that complements her coloring well.

Even the heels are tasteful boots that she could probably run in in an emergency. Overall, she looks like a woman who cares about her appearance but not to the irrational, obsessive degree canon (and fanon) imply.

She’s actually really pretty, not gaudy at all, and her eyes are intelligent and alert.

Well, crap. Overthrowing Shinra is obviously going to be way more difficult than I imagined. I hope Vincent’s been doing his own independent assessment of the general quality of leadership in the company. At this rate, President Shinra might secretly be a good guy.

Nah.

Some more people drift in. Reeve looks younger than I remember (well, duh; he is), Lazard and Rufus come in almost at the same time, and side by side they could be twins. How is it possible that anyone in the building doesn’t realize they’re half-brothers? Tseng is next, but I try not make eye contact in case he can _read minds_. There are a couple of people I don’t recognize, but no one who looks like Hollander. Maybe with Hojo gone, he’s too valuable to risk.

The last to arrive is Palmer. He, at least, lives down to my every expectation. He has some blond-ish hair perched on the top of his head, eerily like Donald Trump, actually, and his skin and suit are almost the exact same shade of washed-out yellow. He’s also almost perfectly round, and his monochrome color scheme does nothing to flatter his figure.

From what I can see of his blank expression, he’s dumb as a very dumb brick. This is the guy in charge of sending a man into space? No wonder Cid fell out with Shinra.

Everyone settles into a seat around the circular table, with numerous Turk bodyguards and appropriated SOLDIERs standing about and generally getting in the way of the servers.

That’s about when I realize who is conspicuously absent.

Angeal is here, looking tense and nervous, and I think I can see Zack fidgeting behind him, though he doesn’t warrant a chair. Genesis is nowhere to be seen, though, and he isn’t exactly a guy who blends into the crowd. Neither is Sephiroth, ostensibly the head of this entire operation. How the hell are they going to have a strategy meeting without him?

It’s not too difficult to maneuver a place for myself on Reeve’s side of the table, since he’s probably the least dangerous person in the room. He refuses wine, so I pour him some water, instead. The good stuff, without bugs in it.

“Be ready,” the Turk next to me says.

I turn, and almost have a heart attack.

It’s _Vincent_.

He has his long hair pulled back in a tail, and sunglasses cover those distinctive eyes. He looks amazing in a suit, obviously, though the close cut emphasizes how scarily thin he is. He really needs to eat more. And he’s wearing _real shoes_. It’s so weird; I was beginning to think his feet were pointy or something. The gauntlet is nowhere to be seen, but he is wearing a glove on that side. Scarring? Discoloring? I expect that’s going to remain a mystery.

By the time my eyes pan back to his face, he’s scowling.

“Uh, sorry,” I say, flushing. “That was rude. Just,” I wave my hands at his everything, “ _wow_.”

He scowls harder.

A few neurons wake up and it occurs to me to wonder what he’s doing here.

That’s about when a metric ton of Wutai ninja fall on our heads.

~*~

Vincent shoves me under a wine cart, probably left empty for this express purpose, and I miss the whole fight, as well as the subsequent capture. Not that I’m too broken up about that.

The Wutaians aren’t stupid. That tent is full of invaluable hostages, and they get everyone with a placecard except Angeal, who they apparently decide isn’t worth the effort after the fight he puts up. Even Tseng gets captured, though I suspect he goes along with it to be in the best position to decide what to do, not that he was unable to get away.

A ransom goes out mere minutes after the prisoners reach the capital. Old Man Shinra hems and haws, he huffs and puffs, but at the end of the day Godo has his son (both his sons) and there’s only two things that bastard cares about: money and legacy.

And Godo makes it easy for him, not demanding money in the ransom.

Which isn’t to say his demands are light: Shinra’s unconditional surrender, a recognition of Wutaian sovereignty, and treaties stating unequivocally that no Shinra representative set foot on the island as long as Godo sits on the throne, with provisions for renewal when the time comes.

Shinra finally balks at that.

So Godo sends him Palmer’s head.

After that things go pretty quickly, and Angeal gets sent to tell Sephiroth and Genesis to stop fighting, the war’s over, time to pack up and go home.

“Your plan?” I ask Vincent, who somehow ended up on the same transport as me. That guy is positively spooky sometimes.

He nods.

“Palmer, too?”

“Godo expected he would have to send a message; I advised him on who was the most expendable.”

“You’re ruthless,” I say, not sure if I mean that as a compliment or not. “I’m really glad we’re on the same side.”

He inclines his head.

I shake myself. I knew what the Turks are, what Vincent is. One could argue that this is exactly why I recruited Vincent in the first place. “So, what’s next?”


	6. Chapter 6

What’s next is getting the hell out of Dodge. Or at least out of the army.

Vincent disappears, mumbling something about checking in, which could refer to any number of schemes, really. All I have to do is walk away in the chaos of the army returning home, which he trusts me to handle on my own.

It’s like he doesn’t even know me. It’s hurtful, really.

“Cadet!”

Because, literally two steps off the transport, Angeal spots me, and somehow recognizes me from our three and a half minutes of acquaintance.

The crowd parts to let him through. Traitors. “You did well with the dinner.”

I blink. “It was attacked? People died?”

“Well, yes. But you organized everything well in a short period of time. And you kept your head under adverse circumstances.” I can hear people shouting Angeal’s name, but he ignores them.

“Um. Thank you? Sir.”

“How are you enjoying your current assignment?”

I try to keep my expression from being too transparent, but I think I fail.

“Can you use a computer?”

“Yes?”

The shouts for Angeal’s attention must have gotten too frequent to ignore, because he makes a frustrated sound and tears off a piece of paper, scribbles on it, and hands it to me. “I think you might do better somewhere else. Shinra Tower, tomorrow, first thing.” Then he allows himself to be swept up and away.

I blink at the paper. I strongly suspect that it used to belong to a copy of _Loveless_ ; I think I recognize that poetry. On the other side is some entirely unintelligible scribbling.

Oh, that’s helpful.

“You should go,” Vincent says, when I finally get back to our apartment.

“Go where? And anyway, I’m out of the army now. Aren’t I?” I didn’t mean for that to sound so much like a question.

He scowls. “You never leave Shinra.”

Yes, thank you, Mr. Positivity.

“Aerith is almost prepared, but we must have access to Commander Rhapsodos if we’re going to administer it,” he says.

“Like there’s anywhere you couldn’t sneak into,” I say, but keep the paper anyway. Angeal isn’t a bad guy, it probably isn’t anything too terrible.

~*~

The game makes it look like Shinra is all one, massive building with a horrendously boring stairwell. That is not the case. Practically everything above the Plate is owned by Shinra, so one could argue that the whole thing is Shinra. The game just takes you through the Tower, where the President’s office is, but there’s a bunch of other buildings surrounding it. One is the barracks and training center for the regular army, and that’s where I’ve been this whole time.

Today will be my first time in the Tower. There’s very little here that I want to be involved in: SOLDIER, the Science Department, the list goes on.

Maybe Angeal wants me to give tours of the museum or something.

I walk up to the counter and smile at the receptionist.

She’s like a caricature of a receptionist; dressed all in black with a high collar, hair pulled back in a severe bun, glasses on a little chain. She looks prim, starched, and like she was born to sit behind a desk and terrify interlopers.

I open my mouth to say something, and all that comes out is a squeak.

She raises a severely unimpressed eyebrow.

“Commander Hewley asked me to come here?” I manage, showing her my paper.

She looks at the scrap like it’s a dead mouse or something.

I try not to fidget.

She stares me down.

I wait. And fidget. I just can’t help myself.

Finally, she gives in and deigns to actually try and read the paper, and it’s hard to tell, but I don’t think she can make out any more than I did in that chicken scratch Angeal calls penmanship. It’s probably against the receptionist code to admit it, though, and she doesn’t.

Instead, she flips it over and looks at the back, with the fancy writing and what might be gilded pages. Somewhere out there, Genesis Rhapsodos is throwing a fit at this treatment of his one true love.

This scrap of poem means something to her—I’m not even going to ask—and she finally hands me an elevator key. But not before buzzing the Turk floor and asking them to send down an escort.

Now that’s just being mean.

Or maybe this is all some really obscure code for chucking people to the Turks? Why would he even bother with such an elaborate set-up? And how had I given myself away?

I don’t recognize the Turk, and she stares at the wall and doesn’t talk to me and I’m so intimidated that I know that if I open my mouth something stupid will come out, so I stare at the wall, too.

We emerge on what is clearly the SOLDIER floor. It doesn’t look much like my memories of Crisis Core, but there are SOLDIERs milling around, and there’s a giant sign that says SOLDIER PROGRAM on the wall.

It’s the little things that clue you in.

So, not the Turks, then.

I’m handed off to a SOLDIER, still none the wiser for what I’m doing here.

“Can I help you?” he asks, in a friendly sort of way.

“Umm…” I say. “I’m… supposed to get a new job? With computers?” Angeal had asked me about my computer skills, right? I hope that wasn’t a total lie; somehow I doubt they have Microsoft Word here.

His smile slips a little. “I’m sorry?”

Right. I just sound like a clueless idiot. Without any better ideas, I show him my scrap of nonsense.

“Ohhh,” he says, eyes widening. “I see. We’ve been expecting a replacement.”

I am officially so, so confused. “Ah. Yes. The replacement. Well, here I am.”

He pats my arm sympathetically.

Suddenly I have a bad feeling.

“You might want to bring some coffee with you,” he says. “Kitchen’s all the way down the hall on the left. Offices are up the stairs, just tell them you’re the new guy. Girl. Lady.” Then he makes tracks out of there.

Okay, make that a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad feeling. And what’s with the hiring process here? Wave some signed poetry around, walk through a few doors, welcome to SOLDIER?

Vincent is going to kill me. Provided I survive that long.

The coffee machine doesn’t look like a familiar model, but it can’t be too complicated. Hot water, coffee stuff, mix together.

I somehow manage to overflow the machine during what should be a simple, straightforward process, but I don’t get any hot coffee on me so I’ll call it a win. There’s a bewildering assortment of flavored creamers and different kinds of sweetener, so I just grab a couple of everything and stuff it in my pockets. If it isn’t needed, I can always put them back later.

It only takes two tries to find the stairs, which lead to a sort of half-floor that overlooks the center of the main SOLDIER floor. Literally; a lot of it is glass, so you can see _everything_ down there. It all looks like new construction, which I’m not sure is a good sign or not.

There’s a square-ish area with a brilliantly purple carpet, which is scuffed and scraped and generally looks like many heavy men in combat boots have tromped all over it while dragging swords. So they built a brand new set of offices and then dragged in an old carpet? President Shinra’s such a cheapskate.

There are three doors leading off into what are presumably the ‘real’ offices, and right in the middle of the carpet are three large oak desks, somewhat illogically arranged in a triangle so they’re all facing each other. Two have shiny, new looking computers, and the third has an ominous-looking scorch mark and a few, scattered folders.

Absolutely no one is around.

I’m getting a distinct feeling that I should not be here.

After twiddling my thumbs for a bit, my natural nosiness takes over and I go to investigate the offices.

This is a mistake; the first door has a shiny, brand new plate that says, simply, ‘General Sephiroth’.

 _Holy shit_.

I absolutely, definitely, real-for-sure should not be here.

I have no excuse for continuing to linger except sheer idiocy, and a soon-to-be-fatal level of curiosity. The next office belongs to ‘Commander Angeal Hewley’, with ‘Commander Genesis Rhapsodos’ down on the end. No Lazard, though.

Duh, he already has an office. This add-on must have been built after the successes in Wutai.

Okay, and if Angeal’s office is here, that might explain why he asked me to come up here. Though not why he _isn’t here._ Or why that SOLDIER guy thought I was a replacement. A replacement for what? There has to be some kind of mistake; you don’t get to work directly for the commanding officers of the largest and most advanced military in the world by successfully navigating the elevator and somewhat less successfully working the coffee machine. Angeal’s just late.

So should I wait? Kick my feet up and drink the coffee? Go hide in a potted plant?

If Sephiroth shows up, I’m flinging myself off the balcony and taking my chances with gravity. It’s only like ten or fifteen feet, and I will _inevitably_ say something ridiculous and mortifying. And when Angeal finally gets here we are having some _very strong words_ , Commander or no.

The actual second I finish this thought, I hear someone moving around. Well, it could be a ghost, or the zombie apocalypse, and frankly I’m kind of hoping it is, because the sounds are coming from _inside Sephiroth’s office_.

I look around, but there’s still no one else here. Maybe… maybe it’s Angeal? And he just… forgot how to read? Or something?

Nothing at all happens for an excruciatingly long ten minutes, and my boredom overcomes my natural caution. This is exactly why I end up kicking zombies and sleeping on dead dragons, instead of having a nice, quiet life.

I knock on Sephiroth’s door. “Um, excuse me?”

“Come in.”

This is such a terrible idea. The actual worst idea, ever, in the history of human existence.

On the other hand, how big can the office possibly be? There probably isn’t room to swing the Masamune.

Probably.

I open the door and go inside.

The first thing I see is a pair of decidedly non-standard combat boots on the desk. That has to be at least a three-inch heel.

And this really is not matching up with my mental image of General Sephiroth. In fact, this seems a lot more like…

“You’re not General Sephiroth,” I blurt out stupidly.

“And neither are you,” Genesis Rhapsodos says, not looking up from the papers he’s flipping through. “So what?”

“Well, this is his office?”

“Well-spotted.”

That seems to be all he has to say. Somehow, I suspect that he is not going to be very helpful in explaining why I’m here. Quietly edging towards the door seems to be the order of the day. _I_ certainly don’t want to be the one explaining certain bootprints to certain Generals.

I’ve got one foot out the door when Genesis throws the papers across the room. “Of all the idiotic, ill-considered, _staggeringly moronic_ ideas in the world, this, this one is the absolute worst!” he shouts, jumping out of his—or rather, General Sephiroth’s—chair and somehow getting his feet off the desk and onto the floor without falling on his face. Though with lots of coat billowing.

Unnecessarily dramatic, maybe, but damn impressive.

He stops short when he sees me, like maybe he forgot that I was still here.

We blink at each other for a few seconds.

“Coffee?” I ask, holding out the cup.

He frowns at me, frowns at the cup, then holds a hand out imperiously. Taking the hint, I hurry over and offer him the cup. He takes a sip, then spits it back out again, right into a potted plant six feet across the room.

“Nice shot,” I say, not able to help myself.

“Ugh, that’s disgusting,” he says, shoving the coffee back into my hands.

What, like I want it back now?

“You want the coffee from the Science Department,” he says. “Or Tseng’s office.”

That is definitely not happening.

“What are you doing up here anyway?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. I’m a cadet—”

He waves a hand for silence, then looks me over from head to toe and obviously finds me wanting.

I try not to scowl too obviously.

“You don’t look like a cadet.”

“I tried to quit; apparently it didn’t take.”

He laughs, a lovely, melodic sound totally at odds with how obnoxious he’s being. “Well, you’re a long way from the cadet barracks.”

“I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” I say. “Or maybe I’m the target of some kind of bizarre secretarial hazing ritual.” I kind of want to show him my paper, but also don’t want to be the only person around when he sees _Loveless_ being used like scrap paper. It’s giving me nightmare visions of my elementary school librarian.

He snaps his fingers, which is just incredibly obnoxious and kind of makes me want to swat his hand, though fortunately for my health I don’t actually do that, and I hand over the paper.

He swears a lot, but mostly under his breath, and Angeal’s name comes up a lot, so I try and ignore it. “Can you read this?” he asks, when he’s finally wound down.

“No. And I don’t know what he wanted, either. He got called away and didn’t have a chance to tell me.”

“Hmm,” he says. He tucks the paper into his coat pocket, and I’m too afraid to ask for it back. “As it happens, Angeal has a mission; I think he took the first one that came through, the sneak. And of course Sephiroth has far more important things to do.” He glares off into space, obviously hoping Sephiroth will sense it somehow.

I let the silence go on far past uncomfortable, but I guess Genesis can sit and seethe about Sephiroth all day. Wouldn’t surprise me. “So, what are you doing then?”

He grins, showing all his teeth. “Well, since you’re already here, you can help me with _my_ work.”

With the sense that I’m intoning my famous last words, I ask, “So what are we doing, then?”

He pushes open the door to his shiny new office, and a truly horrible smell emerges. Guess that explains what he was doing in Sephiroth’s. There are stacks and stacks of boxes overflowing with papers, and stacks of just paper, and all of it carries the sights and smells of the muck from the Wutai campaign. “We,” he says, smirking at my dismay, “are going to file all the paperwork for the campaign. So toss that coffee and let’s get started.”

Famous last words, indeed. Angeal Hewley is a dead man.

Genesis is really helpful for about ten minutes. He takes off his coat, which is smart since it’s so gross in here, and nice for me because he has great biceps. He moves the boxes around with ease, despite how heavy they must be. That’s helpful; getting this stuff stacked in some semblance of chronological order will make the filing significantly easier.

The room is filled far past its capacity, so we (and by we I mean Genesis) start moving stuff out into the center area, dripping muck all over the carpet. At least it was already kind of old and nasty.

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Genesis says. “The real stuff.”

“Hmm,” I say, all my attention on the box in front of me. And it’s not exactly like I can ask Genesis, prickly as hell and about a thousand ranks above me, to fetch me a coffee while he’s at it. I’ll just make do with the SOLDIER coffee like the rest of the plebes.

It doesn’t occur to me until hours later how odd it is that after all that whining he just went to get coffee for himself instead of making someone else do it.

But of course he never came back.

That _bastard_.

~*~

Vincent, of course, is beside himself with joy, in an under-stated Vincent sort of way. I have literally been handed all the most classified information about the war, and direct access to Genesis. Hell, the man expects me to bring him coffee; it could not be easier to sneak him some healing rain if I’d planned it.

Which means I have to actually go and do the work.

“Why don’t _you_ go work for him?” I ask. I’ve been so busy complaining about my new job that my already questionable food has gone cold.

“My skills are better used elsewhere,” he says.

“I could talk to Cid,” I say, stabbing at my mystery meal. Always best to make sure it’s really dead before trying to eat it. “I’m a people person.”

“And perhaps you can retrieve Jenova on the way?” Vincent asks. “Remember, I had to put my mission on hold when I heard that Sephiroth had been deployed.”

“And me.”

He gives me a neutral look.

“Fine then. So I don’t have ‘single-handedly take out telepathic alien menace’ in my skill set. Donna Noble, super temp, that’s me.”

Vincent ignores that. “Has there been any trouble with your cover? Are you in danger? Your instincts might be telling you something that you haven’t consciously noticed.”

“No,” I say, sulking and not trying to hide it. “Genesis is just really, really annoying. And he _whines_.”

Vincent gives me a seriously unimpressed look.

“Don’t say it.”

His silence is quite eloquent.

“Whatever. Give me two more days to make sure this isn’t some convoluted Turkish plot? And I’ll try not to get deployed to Wutai again this time.”

~*~

The next day is a repeat of the first day. I’m still not entirely clear on what my role here is, so I’m wearing my cadet fatigues and a suit jacket that’s over-sized enough to fit over the sweater, so mostly I just look like a big mess. Also, I am forced to take back every nice thing I ever thought about Genesis. Even the boots aren’t that cool upon closer inspection. There is no good in him. He is literally the devil.

It’s a tough call which is more aggravating: that he only showed up for about five minutes to tell me to keep up the good work, or how _ridiculously irritating_ he managed to be in those five minutes.

“Argh!” I shout, kicking a desk. It doesn’t do much to make me feel better, and now my foot hurts.

A head appears at the top of the stairs. Attached to a body. This is the kind of thing you need to worry about in Shinra HQ. “Is he gone?” he asks.

I glare at the guy, who was apparently lurking around a corner so I was the only one to have to deal with Genesis. But not too hard; he looks maybe fifteen, all fresh-faced and cute, and Genesis would probably have reduced him to tears. Or hit on him, which would also not be productive.

“Yeah, he’s gone,” I say, deciding to just let it go. If I’d known that was an option, I totally would have thrown this guy under the bus too, so I don’t have too much moral high ground to stand on.

He ventures off the steps. “What’s that smell?”

“Wutai,” I say. “You weren’t fighting?”

“Me? I’m a secretary, not a soldier!”

Huh. Could this be that heretofore unknown element, the positive development? “So, do you know what, exactly, we’re supposed to be doing?”

Luckily, he does. I forgive him for hiding out from Genesis all day yesterday, because with Genesis gone now he’s just full of useful information. There’s a file room downstairs where all the physical paper is supposed to go, and we’re also supposed to make copies for each of the three offices up here, to be placed in their currently non-existent filing cabinets. Why all this paper is necessary I have no idea, because the offices are literally right next to each other and we’re _also_ supposed to make a digital copy, which will be way easier to access and search than the filing cabinets anyway. Finally, if the paper report is too gross, we’re supposed to print out a clean copy and file that instead, and fill out a little card with our reasons for not keeping the original, and sign it.

Pretty standard filing tedium.

Todd—as the kid eventually introduces himself—shows me the machine we’ll use to create the digital record.

“So it’s a scanner,” I say.

“Huh?”

“…never mind. Takes pictures. Puts them on the computer. Got it.”

He gives me kind of a weird look, but it’s nothing I’m not used to, and without further ado, we get to work.

Our first obstacle is that those boxes are really, extremely heavy. Seriously, how can paper weigh this much? Todd has tiny, teenage boy spaghetti arms, and I happily squandered all of my physical training peeling potato-things in Wutai. And neither of us are tall enough to reach the boxes at the top of the stack.

It’s a sad, sorry sight.

“Maybe Genesis will come back eventually?” I ask, after a futile struggle with one of the larger stacks. I wonder if I sound as ambivalent about that eventuality as I feel.

“Yeah,” Todd says, looking like he’s about to wet his pants at the very thought.

It takes us all day, but we get the loose paper out into the main room, spread over the ugly purple carpet and sorted by date. It’s all very efficient, and I’m actually feeling pretty pleased with myself.

“What is this mess?”

Todd makes this high-pitched squeaky noise that’s honestly giving me second-hand embarrassment, then darts off and shuts himself in Genesis’s office. I hope he doesn’t get some kind of disease from all the nasty stuff in there.

And I hope I live to mock him about this.

Sephiroth is still looming on the stairs, and he’s got this frown that looks _exactly_ like his about-to-stab-you face from the game, and really, he can’t be that old, it’s just unnatural that his voice is that deep and authoritative and completely terrifying.

Not going to run away, not going to run away…

“Well?”

“I’m, I’m, uh… filing?” Oh, smooth. Very smooth.

“Do you even have clearance to be here?”

“Angeal, um, Cap- _Commander_ Hewley sent me? To assist, um, Commander Rhapsodos?”

He blinks, and his whole face rearranges itself into a completely different expression. It’s a little eerie. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Okay, don’t shout at Sephiroth. Obviously a stupid thing to do. “He said I did a good job organizing dinner, so I should come here.” Now that I say it out loud, it sounds completely ridiculous.

“Oh,” Sephiroth says. Maybe that’s just how promotions work in Shinra? “You. He mentioned you.”

 _Oh my god, Sephiroth knows who I am_.

“Okay?”

“Commander Rhapsodos will be very busy the next few weeks,” Sephiroth says, still sounding authoritative, but more like Zack-put-that-down-before-you-put-someone's-eye-out than I-will-sail-the-darkness-of-the-Cosmos-with-this-Planet-as-my-vessel.

I start breathing normally again.

“So I don’t know how much he will be available to help you,” he finishes.

Since there’s no chance at all that he’ll be helpful even if he is here, I’m not too broken up about this. “We’ll manage,” I say. “Um, sir.”

“Right.” Sephiroth gives the closed door of Genesis’s office a dubious look. “Carry on, cadet.”

He disappears into his office, and I have to sit down on the floor and just breathe for a few minutes.

When I look up again, Todd is watching me with wide eyes. “Wow,” he says.

You and me both, kid. You and me both.

~*~

A few days pass. Vincent leaves for Nibelheim again. Sephiroth does _not_ return to his office, thankfully. And Todd and I bond. He ends up being surprisingly good company.

Or maybe I’m just desperate for normal conversation. Between the war, Genesis, and Vincent, it’s a tough call which was worse.

Todd’s father is the head of the Shinra equivalent of HR, and his mother is one of the President’s personal secretaries. So no mystery how he ended up in such a high profile yet low responsibility position. I eventually confess the few details pertaining to why _I’m_ here, and he’s as baffled as I am.

“It’s not that I mind being a secretary,” Todd says, while we’re both up on chairs trying to lift down boxes. “I mean, with Shinra it’s basically the military or paper-pushing, and I don’t want to fight.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“I just thought I’d be doing something, you know. More important,” he says. “No offense.”

“Not going to offend me. I didn’t choose this job either, but if Shinra is going to insist on illogically multiplying paper, then I’m going to make sure it multiplies in an orderly fashion.” My little speech is somewhat ruined when I have to jump back to avoid dropping the box on my foot.

Todd laughs. “Yeah. We’ll make sure it’s done right.”

I show him how to fist bump, and we start dragging the box into the main room.

“You know, eventually we’re going to need some actual office supplies,” I say. “Folders, labels, that kind of thing.”

“Did you check in General Sephiroth’s office?” he asks absently, then turns green. “I mean…”

I put on a serious face. “Stealing office supplies from General Sephiroth? That’s what happened to the _last_ secretary.” I can’t hold it though, and start laughing.

After checking carefully that Sephiroth didn’t spring out of nowhere and somehow overhear him, Todd starts laughing, too.

“That would definitely be the most unique reason for being impaled on the Masamune,” I say, still snickering. I have this image in my head, of Sephiroth how he was in Advent Children, and me squaring off with him armed only with a stapler and a handful of sparkly paperclips. Possibly I’m becoming unhinged from so much time spent in this world.

“Or I could ask my dad,” Todd says. “He said he wouldn’t interfere in my internship, but, well, I think these are special circumstances.”

“It’s something all right,” I say, going for the next box. Seriously, this stuff has to be highly classified. Why the hell are a cadet and an intern allowed to deal with it, unsupervised? I could set this on fire right now, and no one would ever know.

“Maybe tomorrow we can get adventurous and look for the copy room,” Todd says.

“Ooh, a mission. Sounds dangerous.”

“It might be,” he says. “I heard about this one guy who was in such a hurry he fell and sprained his ankle.”

I give him a skeptical look. “You made that up.”

“Intern’s honor,” he says.

I roll my eyes, we both laugh, and then it’s back for more boxes.

I think things are really starting to look up.


	7. Chapter 7

I wake up tied to a chair.

It’s not the worst situation I’ve ever been in. Shinra Mansion and a certain pair of zombies comes to mind.

Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

“Hello?”

No one answers, and there’s no one around that I can see. Can’t see much of anything at all, actually, because I’m also blindfolded.

“You’re awake.”

I try to jump, but since I’m tied down I just manage to hurt myself and go nowhere. “Aah!”

“I have some questions for you.”

“Okay?” Seriously, what am I supposed to say to that?

I feel someone touching the back of my head, and the blindfold falls away.

I’m in a small, square, greyish room with two chairs and a table, all very industrial and functional looking, and bolted to the ground. Sitting across from me is Tseng. The head of the Turks.

_Crap_.

All my panic must show on my face.

“You know who I am,” Tseng says. “Interesting.”

I try not to think anything incriminating, but of course that’s impossible. The part of my brain that isn’t repeating _how did he know what did I do_ over and over is cycling through every classified piece of information that I definitely don’t want Tseng to know, or know that I know.

I definitely don’t have a future as a Turk. If I even have a future at all.

“We have reason to believe that you are a Wutai spy,” he says.

“ _Eh_?” I don’t have to fake my total surprise and disbelief.

Tseng frowns, obviously reading this off my face or body language or the beat of my heart for all I know. However he’s seeing it, it is not what he expected.

“You were in Wutai,” he says.

“Well, yeah, I was in the army.”

Tseng is giving me blank face.

Which just makes me want to babble. “We all had to go. There was this one guy who only joined the day before, like actually a single day. I’d been here a few weeks, but I was terrible with firearms and was repeating the class. A few more weeks and I might have been booted out and never gone to Wutai at all. But Sephiroth went so the rest of us did too and so there I was. In Wutai.” I cough.

“Hmm,” Tseng says. “Tell me about your deployment.”

There isn’t much to tell, but he listens with apparent fascination to the saga of the potato-things and the possible-oatmeal and my misogynist boss and the one time I met Angeal which I didn’t know it at the time but _ruined my life_.

“Oh?” Tseng asks. “How?”

I skim over the whole murder dinner thing—he was _there_ , he hardly needs my report—and explain, in great detail, every annoying thing Genesis has ever done. If I’m going to die here in a Turk interrogation cell, this is what I want as an epitaph. Preferably the entire rant, but I’d settle for ‘enjoy doing your own filing, you whiny, obnoxious diva’.

Tseng actually seems a tiny bit amused when I finally wind down. Which just goes to show that Turks have a very strange idea of humor, which I already knew, but now I know twice over. “Tell me more about how you came to be working on the SOLDIER floor.”

Somehow, this entire situation is Angeal’s fault. I know it. I do not spare him any of the blame in my recitation. Though I do try to leave Todd out of it. He’s a good kid.

“Hmm,” Tseng says. “Wait here.”

He gets up and leaves, and of course I don’t. Because I’m tied to the chair.

“Not funny, Tseng,” I say, but very quietly.

I wait long enough to be stiff, and also to really have to pee, but Tseng eventually comes back.

“Are these the mission orders Commander Hewley gave you?” he asks, producing a worn and rather dirty scrap of paper from somewhere. Thin air, probably.

“I don’t know about ‘mission orders’ but yeah. Same bit of _Loveless_ , same indecipherable scrawl. Why?”

Tseng puts it down on the table. “This is a recommendation that you be transferred to a more paperwork-oriented position and away from the frontlines,” he says. “The Commander felt that your talents were being wasted.”

Asking ‘what talents’ probably would not be helpful right now.

“It seems,” Tseng says, glaring off into the distance, “that someone— _several_ someones—saw this handwriting and that play and decided that, even if they couldn’t read the orders, they were obviously related to Commander Rhapsodos in some way. So they sent you to his office, and since you were there, he assumed you had clearance to be there, and that’s how you ended up with access to all those classified documents.”

I blink. “So… that’s why I’m in trouble? But that wasn’t my fault!”

“So it would seem,” Tseng says. “Apologies.”

He pulls out a knife, and after a few terrifying seconds, cuts through the ropes.

“You’re free to go,” he says.

There are about a dozen things I want to say, and none of them nice. But I don’t want to get in even more trouble, and I really do have to pee. I settle for a snide “Thanks” and frowning at the Turk who opens the door for me. That will just have to do.

I really wish Vincent was still in town, though. Maybe he could explain what the hell just happened.

~*~

I drift into work twenty minutes late and braced to run if it looks like a trap. Not that I would ever see it coming. Todd is already there, looking just as white-faced and twitchy as I feel.

The third desk, the one with the scorch mark that we’ve both been avoiding, is now occupied. By a Turk.

Todd and I look at each other.

“Hi?”

“Good morning?”

We both giggle nervously.

Todd’s the first to speak, glancing nervously at the Turk before quickly looking away. “He’s going to make sure we aren’t stealing classified material?”

“Oh, okay.”

We lapse into silence. Boy is this uncomfortable.

I’m older, so I feel like it’s my duty to get us back on track. “Well, should be get back to work? Assuming we, uh, still have work?”

“Yeah, the Turks, um, reorganized everything, but it’s all still there,” Todd says. “Uh, more or less.”

I can see the hasty censorship job in the form of black marker from here. I don’t even question why they would redact what are, presumably, original and unique documents, because Shinra. I would like to know why the Turks had time to censor all this but not to actually file the things, but I suppose that will have to remain one of life’s great mysteries.

Todd is trying very hard not to look at our new babysitter and sweating nervously.

“Great,” I say, forcing a smile

“Yeah.”

Oh, this is going to be fun.

~*~

In an interesting plot twist, we’re just finishing up our first day of Turk-supervised filing—mostly involving transferring the papers back out into the main room—when who should arrive but the actual inhabitants of the offices.

Though ‘inhabitants’ might not be the right word here, considering Sephiroth showed up once and Genesis twice, both for less an hour, total. Also, people don’t generally live in their offices.

Except possibly Lazard.

Todd looks like he’s about to expire just from being in the presence of these three.

Now that I’ve actually met them, I’m feeling a little less impressed. Sure, two of these three literally almost destroyed the world—sometimes more than once—but it’s hard to remember that when they’re being annoying as hell and leaving bootprints on other people’s desks.

I should run that by the fanclubs, see if that can get them to calm down a little.

We all just look at each other for a bit, waiting for someone to talk first.

Well, it’s not going to be _me_. Unlike some people, I’ve been doing my job.

Wait. Genesis is here.

“Is the world about to end right this minute?” I ask.

The Turk shifts. Everyone else just gives me weird looks.

“Um… no?” Angeal says.

“Great.” I turn to Genesis. “Since you’re obviously not going to be here for more than five minutes at a time, this partnership is going to require some creative thinking. Also maybe passing notes. But since you’re here now, could you lift down the tall boxes? Please? And maybe find some filing cabinets?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “Absolutely not.”

I resist the urge to hiss at him. Barely.

Sephiroth makes a strange huffing noise that might possibly be the beginning of a laugh.

I try not to stare too obviously because, rude. But… Sephiroth. Laughing. And not in an Evil Overlord List kind of way.

“We’re actually here for a meeting,” Angeal says.

So he can’t take five seconds to move a few boxes around? He has superpowers!

He must read something on my face, because he pulls out a PHS. “I’ll get Zack to come up.”

“Thanks.” Still lazy, in my opinion, but at least the stuff will get moved. God knows Genesis was never actually going to do it. Plus: Zack!

It looks like we’re heading for another round of awkward standing around, but then Sephiroth takes charge. “Before we go, I have instructions to relay,” he says, any nascent humor disappearing. “Sit.”

This is something of an adventure in itself. Sephiroth gets a chair, which absolutely no one challenges, and Angeal sits before he realizes that there’s going to be a shortage of chairs, then kind of hovers sheepishly on the edge like he wants to offer the chair to someone else but doesn’t want to make it awkward. Genesis drapes himself over the desk, managing to be in both Angeal _and_ Sephiroth’s personal space, which is honestly kind of impressive. The Turk hasn’t moved from the desk she’s commandeered, so I decide that perching on the end of Angeal’s desk is probably the best move here.

Todd kind of sinks to the floor and out of sight.

“There has been some error, or, rather, a series of errors.” Sephiroth takes a few seconds to look supremely annoyed with the world and everyone on it. “Angeal decided to handwrite transfer orders on paper he just had lying around, which he has already been spoken to about—”

At least Angeal looks appropriately sheepish.

“—which is why you are here.”

For a moment, I am the sole object of all of General Sephiroth’s considerable attention. I probably whimper, and feel no shame for it.

“The Turks have investigated, and it appears that there has been no harm done. _This_ time. Such a security breach will not occur again.”

He glares around the room, and I am forced to give Angeal a few mental points for meeting that look without squirming. I’m certainly feeling shamed, and this whole mess was actually, genuinely, in no way my fault.

After another round of glaring, we all manage a few muttered ‘yes, sirs’, even the Turk, and there’s a faint whimper from Todd’s general direction.

“I see we understand each other,” Sephiroth says, then gets to his feet and strides purposefully out of the room, probably off to shame some other poor unfortunate.

“Does he have to be so _dramatic_ about it?” Genesis complains.

Luckily, my entirely involuntary protest at such _blatant hypocrisy_ is mostly masked by Angeal getting to his feet, then nudging Genesis until he gets off the desk.

“Good work,” Angeal says, giving me a weak smile, and herds Genesis off after Sephiroth and, presumably, towards this fabled meeting.

As apologies go, it is entirely inadequate. Tseng had me _tied to a chair_!

A tuft of hair, then a very pale face emerges over the edge of one of the desks. “Mm?” Todd asks.

“Think of it this way: the faster we get the filing done, the sooner we can get out from underfoot and never have to be personally chastised by the General ever again.”

“Mm!” he agrees fervently.

~*~

Vincent calls to say that all of Jenova’s biological material—ew—has been removed from the reactor and he and… it… are in Rocket Town.

“So… Jenova didn’t sprout tentacles and try and take over your body?”

“…was that a possibility?”

“Maybe? It’s hard to keep track of exactly what Jenova can and can’t do. Though probably she couldn’t do that to you specifically, because of the Chaos factor.”

“That did not happen.”

“And she hasn’t tried to influence anyone’s mind? Turn them against you?”

“Cid believes I am a vampire.”

"Well… that’s kind of an understandable assumption, not necessarily motivated by evil alien telepathic, uh, biological material."

"Indeed."

It's hard to believe there were no problems at all. The silence stretches as I ponder this, because Vincent really does not do his fair share of holding up the conversation.

"There is a problem?" Vincent asks at last. 

“It’s just... this is kind of, you know, anticlimactic. I can’t believe she hasn’t tried anything.”

“The rocket is not ready yet; there is still time for something to go wrong.”

“Well, thanks, Sunshine, that’s real reassuring. Did I tell you about my own near-death experience? Tseng had me tied to a chair!”

Of course he’s already picked apart that whole interaction, and settled on supremely unimpressed. “Turks do not waste time with threats. You either have a death experience or a not death experience, and yours was obviously the latter.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, and he hangs up, unwilling to listen to me complain some more. It’s a minor miracle that he’s deigned to call at all, but I think somewhere, deep down, he was concerned when he left last time and I got shipped out to war. Tiny bit concerned.

“Just seeing a Turk is a near-death experience, that’s what I should have said,” I tell the PHS, because you always think of a comeback after the moment has passed.

He probably wouldn’t have appreciated it anyway. 

~*~

A few days later, Zack actually turns up. He’s as bright and smiling and friendly as I expected, and he also brings coffee, the good stuff, so he’s basically the best person ever.

“I’m here for some heavy lifting!” he announces, flexing his (impressive) muscles and beaming.

I think Todd might be a little bit in love.

Well, he'll have to get in line.

“Awesome,” I say. “Todd, where are the filing cabinets?”

The best I can say about what transpires after that is, we’re fortunate it was Zack. Zack of the perpetually cheery attitude and all-around down-to-earth, good guy-ness. Because it’s a shitshow.

Todd and I had sort of talked about the necessary office supplies, but I think he forgot or something because he hadn’t followed up on any of that. I mean, I guess I could have done the following up, but he’s the one with connections, so I have no qualms about tossing the potato of blame.

The filing cabinets are “a few floors down”, which, considering this is the 49th floor, really not helpful. So we depart on a quest to find someone who might know where the filing cabinets actually are.

Todd doesn’t want to bother his parents for whatever reason, and the only person I know is the receptionist in the lobby, so we go all the way down to ask her, despite the almost-certain futility of such an attempt.

The receptionist today turns out to be young and cute and really into Zack, or at least receptive to his friendly flirting, so that’s a real break. She doesn’t have the faintest idea where the spare filing cabinets are, but she does have a directory and a number of people she knows in the building who might have some clue.

The sixth person she tries thinks she might know something, so we all trek up to the 33rd floor, which is some kind of administrative hub, and talk to the guy in person. This requires us to then walk all around the floor, poking our heads in the various cubicles, then letting Zack chat about their grandchildren/new haircut/pet cat (the guy seriously knows _everyone_ ) until a passing janitor overhears us and says _he_ knows a maintenance guy who was just bitching about a bunch of filing cabinets blocking access to one of the control panels.

That guy is, naturally, not working today, but his partner remembers the rant and checks the schedule and we finally find the cabinets in a storeroom on the 40th floor.

In all, this probably takes about three hours.

“You’re seriously the best,” I tell Zack, hovering and providing moral support as he hauls the gigantic things towards the elevators.

Some puffed-up asshat in a red suit turns his nose up and insists that we have to use the _freight_ elevators, these elevators are for _businessmen_ , and I heroically refrain from punching him in the nose. Compared to the Quest for the Cabinets, the twenty minutes it takes us to find the freight elevators seems to go by in the blink of an eye.

“You’re so strong,” Todd says, starry-eyed.

I hate to be the one to tell him that everyone who meets him seems to be a little bit in love with Zack, and that he already has a girlfriend, so I don’t. I mean, it’s possible that he doesn’t actually have a girlfriend yet,  Vincent didn’t mention anything but he’s not exactly Mr. Celebrity Gossip Rag.

By the end of the day, a whole wall of each of the three offices are lined with filing cabinets. It’s a miracle.

“I don’t have words for how grateful we are,” I tell Zack. “Can I buy you a coffee? Or a car?”

He strikes a pose. “Happy to help out!”

I think he even means it. How can people like Zack really exist?

“Seriously,” I say, even though I’m probably making it weird now. “I just… I can’t even imagine how I would have convinced Genesis to do that. Er, Commander Rhapsodos.”

Zack laughs. “Oh man, that would… yeah. It’s my duty as SOLDIER to save anyone from such a fate.”

He gives Todd a friendly punch on the shoulder, wheedles a phone number out of our Turk bodyguard, and grins at me on his way out the door. Despite myself, my heart melts a little.

But at least I’m not sighing wistfully, the way Todd and, surprisingly, the Turk are.

I need to do something nice for that man. Now that I really think about it, he can’t have met Aerith yet, that was during the whole drama of Genesis and Angeal deserting. I’ll have to set up a meeting, somehow. With a little help from Vincent, I could probably even ensure that he still falls through the roof.

It’s what any friend would do. 

~*~

“We still don’t have any folders or labels,” Todd says, when I get to work the next day.

“For the love of God…dess, please just ask your dad!” 

~*~

Now that I’ve been brought to the attention of the admin team around the Tower, I’ve suddenly tapped into the greatest information source on the Planet. Nipping down to the main cafeteria for lunch is enough to tell me everything about everyone.

I wish I’d known about this before I joined the damn army!

Most of it is useless to me, the foibles of the various Shinra execs, some of the President’s more benign shortcomings, where different unclassified missions are being run, and of course endless, inconsequential details on the personal lives of everyone in the Tower. But it’s all worth it when I hear about the space program.

Seems it was put on temporary hold when Palmer found himself suddenly on the other side of the world from his head, which I probably should have realized sooner. But since he was so, staggeringly incompetent at his job, that turned out not to be much of a loss to the program, and Cid’s relentless enthusiasm convinced the President that it was worth continuing the funding. Seems he wanted something to look impressive after the disaster of the Wutai War, even though what got reported in Midgar made it sound like a victory for Shinra, and sending a man into space was just the kind of cool, flashy thing that would get and hold everyone’s attention.

So everything is back on track, probably even on a _better_ track with Palmer out of the way and Vincent on-site, smoothing the way (Cid wasn’t anymore diplomatic when he was younger, go figure). This whole Jenova thing should be wrapped up in a few weeks, no problem.

What could go wrong?

…yeah, that doesn’t even bear thinking about.


End file.
